Archive of Our Own

Mornings in Stark Tower go like this: Harley wakes up, forgoes dressing in favor of breakfast and his most caffeinated tea, falls back asleep on the couch anyway, and wakes up again when his fingers are jittering out of his skin. Then the day starts.

Days in Stark Tower go like this: terrible.

At this point he should know not to practically inject caffeine in the morning, because by the time it runs its course the adenosine’s following its path, leaving his head slipping off his hand for the fourth time in five minutes, sleep dangerously close to winning out. Peter gives him a little sympathetic smile but then hits him with a “you should’ve adeno-seen this coming” that has Harley gripping his scalpel tighter than he needs to, eyes narrowed and daring. He hopes the stupid spider sense is screaming.

He only gets to work with Peter nine hours of the week – three hour shifts whenever they fit in Peter’s schedule – but they’re his favorite nine hours and they make the most of them every time. They claim seats next to each other in whichever lab they’re assigned and push them together like brains on a project, leaping into whatever instructions they’re given.

They’re stuck on the intern floors for now, which is the actual source of Harley’s misery. When Peter isn’t around Harley keeps to himself, completing his assignments and offering lab reports to his supervisors, but he spends the time thinking hatefully towards Tony and the nepotism he dares him to ask for. Harley’s a great lot of things but a hypocrite’s not one; he can’t go bitchin’ about every motherfucker who got a job they didn’t earn just because their daddy’s got money just to do the same as soon as he gets to Manhattan. He didn’t spend the first seventeen years of his life carrying his family in Rose Hill and succeeding just to jump the ladder now that he’s finally got his feet on the rungs.

But then again, sometimes he considers dabbling, just a little, in the whole “using Tony Stark’s name to get whatever you want” thing. The thing being out of the intern floors.

“It’s because they keep putting you in bio with me,” Peter says while hunched over a microscope, “When you should be in robotics.”

“Doesn’t explain why you’re still here,” he mutters, except it does. Harley might’ve fast-tracked MIT in three years, but Peter’s got enough going on that he’ll be lucky to finish Columbia in the usual four. He should be in the undergrad intern labs. Harley just thinks they’re both too good for them.

“I’m here because they keep putting you in bio with me,” he gives a long-suffering sigh, slumping dramatically over the skin cell samples, and Harley resists the urge to kick him. “Stop dragging me down with you, Keener.”

“You callin’ me dead weight, darlin’?”

“I’m sayin’ you’ll be dead somethin’,” he mocks.

Now Harley does kick out towards the shin hidden under the table. With one eye squinting shut and the other looking into a bright light, Peter has no way to see it coming. He pulls his leg back anyhow. Bastard.

The problem with the intern labs is that Harley is bored. It’s been near five months since he got his degree but he hasn’t gotten any sort of notice, any acknowledgement, any hint that they might bump him up to be an actual employee any time soon. That would be fine if he thought it was still possible, but at this point he and Peter haven’t been given anything unique to challenge them which can be used to stand out. They’ve been doing the same experiments every day, having the same conversations every hour, and relearning the same results every test. One thing over and over and over again.

If it was something with robots his opinion might be different, but at this point he’s mindless with his actions, encouraged only when Peter is with him but otherwise stuck in his own mind doing work he thought he’d be beyond by then. He just wants something more. By the end of the day he’s drained, bone tired but unfulfilled; time wasted in unproductivity.

He doesn’t think he used to be like this, back when the days ran slow in the Tennessee heat, but then again maybe he was. In the cold metal of his updated garage, time ticked and spun out of control. He was always thinking there, about application processes for colleges, for scholarships, for internships. Crunching numbers and creating anything he thought a judge might like, until an envelope containing a letter and a blank check took those worries away.

There’s less to worry about in New York when staying with the Starks. Less to worry about, way more to do, but absolutely no clearance to do it.

Nights in Stark Tower go like this: Morgan is in her booster seat at the table, strapped in for the days she insists she doesn’t need it and tries to wriggle down, with Pepper watching her every move because Morgan can pick a lock like a motherfucker. Regular buckles stopped working as soon as she had the strength to open them, and Tony can hardly design a new clasp before she fits her tiny fingers in the nooks of the last one. At three years old she’s too smart for a booster and Harley reckons they’d be better off buying a whole new dining set that sits closer to the floor. On the bright side, unescapable baby equipment might find its way to the shelves, for every child who isn’t Morgan Stark.

Tony makes it to dinner every night and regals them all with tales of the labs, the office, and the living room, where Morgan is contained until she stops overriding FRIDAY’s protocols because the AI is too far gone on the toddler.

“App devs hit a standstill on Wednesday and still haven’t pulled through. Gotta swing by tomorrow to see where the issue is, because the debrief sounded like there was no issue at all. Maybe I’ll collect you from electromag and we’ll see what you make of it.” It sounds, maybe not interesting nor quite his preference, but infinitely better than anything he’s been assigned for weeks. But arriving anywhere with Tony Stark will get people talking, and he’s still trying the natural climb with Peter. Likely knowing what’s in his head, Tony speaks again. “What’s Pete doing tonight?”

Harley’s got a knife through a carrot when he asks, so he ignores the question for just a moment, struggling with the blade until it hits the cutting board with a thunk. Morgan’s going at a piece he gave her with a vengeance, little teeth gnawing the thing to shreds. It distracts him until his head runs empty. “Hm?”

“How’s Peter?”

“Ask him yourself.” But Harley is already shoving a carrot stick in his mouth and wiping his hands on his pants, reaching for the phone in his back pocket.

H: tonys asking how you are

P: tell him i’m dead

“He died,” Harley reports, dropping the phone face down on the table and reaching for another carrot, “Probably a freak accident. Tragic.”

“Ask him if he wants me to get Kesha for the funeral.”

“Ooh, good call.” He wipes his hands again.

H: do you want kesha to sing at yr funeral

P: yes obviously

P: is tony paying? ask him if he can get an abba reunion

“He wants ABBA, too.”

“Impossible. I’m not a superhero, kid.”

He’s not amused as he looks up, Tony’s face already stretched in that cheesy grin that comes with a bad joke. God, he becomes more like a dad every year. Disgusting.

“That’s it,” he says, “I’m moving out.”

“Moving in with Peter already? C’mon, Keener, cut your old man a break.”

If Harley thought about it for even a moment, he might realize that Peter was never part of his plans, and that moving out of Stark Tower didn’t mean moving in with Pete. But his brain is tired from doing nothing all day so he doesn’t think, and he doesn’t ask, and whatever conclusions Tony has come to are free to remain that way. That’s the mistake he makes. That’s where things go wrong.

Because Tony Stark’s strength is not in communication, which means Harley Keener’s has to be, and when it isn’t then nothing gets said. And when nothing gets said then assumptions get made and somehow, somewhere along the way, an impression is formed that Peter and Harley are dating.

~

For all that Harley’s mind is starved, Peter’s is never empty. Two days later finds him in the physics lab with Harley even while his brain is in the senior lab at Columbia, flipping through the tests he still has to run to confirm that he’s working with the best material possible for his project. It results in half-done work, which is why it’s always a good thing that Harley tends to hook his chin over his shoulder and monitor the experiments with him. Three hours pass by too quickly when they work together; it’s one of the only things Peter dislikes about the internship.

He catches the time on a clock on the wall and starts to pack his stuff up to go. Harley has already put all of his papers in order, so Peter only needs to grab them on his way out, knowing that if he cuts it any closer, he’ll have to swing across the city to make his class at 1. He checks his phone before he leaves.

“Harls?” He asks.

“Hm?”

“Did Pepper text you?”

Harley pulls back, patting around until he finds his phone in his lab coat, and pulls it out so they both can see. No new messages.

“No, why?”

“Will you and Harley be at dinner on Sat?” he reads aloud.

“She should already know I’ll be there. You got a hot date instead, boy wonder?” His eyebrows wiggle beneath his goggles.

“I always go to Saturday dinners.”

“Well, not last week.” Harley puts his phone away and goes back to his notes, typing what Peter knows are the same sentences as the days before with different numbers attached. “Last week we met up with Gwen. And last month we had that virtual colloquium for MJ.”

“Okay,” he concedes, “But you were always with me.”

Harley only shrugs while Peter ponders it, head never empty. That was implied in her message anyway, right? She knew that.

Peter: You know I’ll always come to dinner

“You gotta go, darlin’, it’s ten after. I’ll see you Friday.”

“‘Course, Harls, see ya.” And Peter shuffles across the distance -- only four feet between them -- to knock their shoulders together, dropping his head down to hit gently against the crown of the other’s. It’s a usual goodbye for them and needs no more words, so none are said.

~

When the Saturday family dinner comes around, both of them present as promised, Peter is distracted with a test that’s still nearly a week away. Morgan is in her room with Pepper, today’s mommy-daughter bonding activity centered around cleaning up the melted ice shards from ice skating that afternoon, and Tony is poking at a lasagna that Harley knows isn’t done. Peter hasn’t said a word to them for an hour, hands tangled up in his hair, back bowed over a notebook.

Harley watches him for a moment, his own activities forgotten. Peter’s palms are pressed flat into his temples like he’s trying to constrict the brain beneath the bone. He’s even got on the glasses that he hasn’t needed since he was fourteen (surely hurting more than they were helping) and Harley sighs a bit at the sight.

“You’ve got six days still, Peter, you’ll do just fine.”

“Sure,” he hits back immediately, “I’ll pass. Or maybe not. Maybe I’ll fail it miserably and also fail the class and also flunk outta college while I’m at it because honestly why not? Just cross couldn’t comprehend basic biological concepts off my Get Fucked bingo board.”

“You have a Get Fucked bingo board?” Tony asks distractedly, wiggling the 9x13 to see if the pasta had set.

“No,” he mutters, falling back and rubbing his eyes, “I have a manageable fears board or whatever Miss Lane called it, I don’t remember. The point is that if I don’t pass this test, I’ll be in a super bad spot for the next one.”

“Alright. What are you struggling with?”

“I’m not even sure. I know what I’m doing, right? But I’m supposed to write it down and be able to answer questions about it and give other examples and – I just don’t get this comparison stuff. You see me make shit all the time in the lab,” he speaks directly to Harley here, eyes wide and imploring, as if Harley would ever say no to a claim he makes, “I know this. I know I do, but I can’t say how.”

“You knowin’ it is still a mite better than others in your class, darlin’. We can just practice figuring out how you know.”

“It’s so easy to just do things.”

“Unless you’re Tony Stark, you can’t work like that.” Harley’s distracted by Tony shooting a smug grin at his name, picking up the lasagna to put on the table. “It’s not done yet.”

“Shut it, Keener.”

“Eat raw pasta, then. Anyway, Pete, you’re gonna have to justify yourself on your reports or your lab manager won’t sign off on the materials you need. Gotta predict the results or at least expect somethin’.”

“You want your own lab, underoos?” Tony shuts the oven door. “We can make that happen.”

Harley rolls his eyes at the familiar words, but Peter is smiling now, shuffling his papers together to make room on the table.

“I just want to pass bacterial pathogenesis for now, thanks.”

“You want some practice explaining things?” Harley hands a short stack of plates to him, taking cups for himself as they work together to set the table for dinner. “I have no idea what you’re talking about so you can always try to teach me.”

“I know you’ve got your own stuff to do.”

Harley thinks about the hunk of metal in his room, hidden from view and tucked out of his mind since he’d given up on it a few weeks before. He forgot to mention the total bust it turned out to be.

“I’m not busy. Want to meet at the café before work on Monday?”

“You?” he laughs, “Awake before you have to be? Don’t hurt yourself on my account.”

“Actually, you know what, Parker? I’ve changed my mind.”

“Aw, no, Harley-”

“Can’t fuckin’ wait to watch you fail. Gonna be waving flags and shit outside your classroom.”

“You’ll come all the way to Columbia for li’l ol’ me?” He does his best southern belle impression, which Harley can firmly assess is not good, and bats his stupid brown eyes.

“Sure. Witness the end of your career and your subsequent funeral in the same day.” He bares his butter knife threateningly and Peter is laughing, alternating between covering his mouth and reaching to the back of his neck, looking around in fake concern.

“Oh god, oh no,” he says with humor still on his tongue, “What is this fear that fills me? What horrible man seeks to kill me today?”

“Are we finished?” Tony interrupts, oven mitts over his hands and exasperation in the way his eyebrows raise up.

“You have no place in this, old man.”

“Forgive me, but can you take your marital spat someplace else? My beautiful wife and only daughter will be walking in at any moment and I don’t want blood on the floor.”

“Married people don’t fight like this,” Peter says.

“Too vicious for marriage,” Harley agrees and bares his teeth as well.

“Well, whatever it is gets you kids going these days, please do it elsewhere.”

“Like the café at seven, maybe?” Harley knocks his foot into Peter’s under the table, knife returning to its home. Regardless of how long a sigh Peter lets out, no one can miss the way his lips turn up in a smile.

“I suppose I can do seven. I’ll order and grab our table for when you’re late.” Harley’s eyes flash, wicked grin stretching wide to keep the conversation going, but Tony finally takes over, putting the cooked lasagna on the table and the matter to rest.

~

“Okay losers,” MJ greets across the screen, “Two weeks. Friendsgiving. My place.”

“I dunno, MJ,” Peter grins. It’s just the three of them, the high school classics, and Peter feels happiness in his chest at the sight. His textbook and practice questions for a test coming up are pushed to the side, mind focused on seeing his friends again after so long using only the group chat to talk. “That’s gonna require you confessing you have friends. You sure you’re down for that?”

“Okay Ned,” she says, and then the window closes and Peter is left staring at the little box that says the host has removed you from the meeting.

“Oh come on it was funny!” He protests to the empty apartment and starts clicking around to rejoin the call.

“Do you still feel like being a bitch?” MJ asks as soon as her face reappears.

“I’m all bitched out.”

“Congrats on your recovery. I’m flying in that Saturday but I’m gone again Wednesday morning to attend some protests in Nevada so we’re on a time crunch.”

“Well we can’t do that Saturday night,” Ned pitches in, not even looking at the camera as he types madly at his coding project of the week, “Peter’s got family dinner.”

“Shut up. You’re just mad that last time you went Morgan threw her peas at you.”

“That’s what a baby does when they don’t like you! I was not-liked by Morgan Stark! That ruined me, Peter!”

“Oh god,” she deadpans, “His reputation. Oh no.”

“Just us three?” Peter checks, his calendar up on his phone.

“Harley and Betty can come, of course.”

“Ooh, a friends-and-partnersgiving. Bringing anyone, MJ?” Ned tries to wink but he’s never been good at that so it comes off as a blink, slightly uneven. She makes a show of retching.

“Gross. No. If a man ever dared to look at me I’d skewer him.”

“I didn’t say it had to be a guy,” and he blinks again.

“Stop doing that. Anyway, I say we skip the turkey,” here, here! is echoed by the boys, “But I can grab a rotisserie chicken or two from the store.”

“Can we have veggie gravy?” Peter asks, now grabbing a piece of paper near him to make a list.

“I can grab some gravy and make sure it’s kosher,” Ned offers.

“Nah, I’ll do it. I want it meatless for Harls.”

“If you bring macaroni and cheese to our Queens Friendsgiving because your boyfriend is southern, I’m kicking one of you out of the group chat.”

“One of us?” Peter asks with amusement, “Which one?”

“Whoever’s holding it when you walk in the door.” Peter snorts.

“No mac ‘n’ cheese,” he mutters, crossing it out, “Noted. And he’s not my boyfriend.”

“Sure, loser. You gonna show up together?”

“Yeah, I’ll be there that weekend anyway so we can grab a ride from Happy.”

“Mhm,” and when Peter looks at the computer, he sees his two friends giving each other a look, which is so stupid honestly because they’re all on the same video call and it’s impossible to give a private side-eye when they’ve all got the same screen. “Anyway. Ned, if you bring carrot juice again I’ll be forced to kill you.”

“It’s a family tradition!”

“Tradition does not excuse a crime against humanity.”

And he forgets about it.

~

The hunk of metal that Harley gave up on was, at one point, an exercise in intelligence. Most robots are made with a set purpose, created to fulfill it and for no other task, but Harley wanted to explore creating a general robot and seeing what it was capable of, perhaps like a very dumbed down AI. But still not that, as even FRIDAY was created with specific expectations, even if those expectations were vast and substantial.

Harley doesn’t have the same problem as Peter, the problem of having so much knowledge he doesn’t know where it came from. He spent weeks with a desk full of materials and his coding program open and still couldn’t figure out which points should go together or even where to start. He wrote down every theory he imagined was relevant and tried to determine what they would leave him with, but he could never get beyond a few basic measures. Finally, he threw the project away.

The day after their conversation, Harley finds himself looking through his codes again. With Peter being too busy for him and the last several weeks of work being entirely uninspiring, he’s become bored and, he realizes now, he’s aching for a challenge. So, he gets to work. What was previously determined impossible gets looked at with a fresh eye, parameters narrowing from “see what it’s capable of” to “give it the means to self-assess what it needs and provide” which, while not any easier, was certainly more conceptual. He works for hours, beyond the morning and afternoon and deep into the night, and is about to call it quits when his mind whispers like a mistress what if it was… smaller?

Monday morning in Stark Tower goes like this: Harley’s phone goes off at 6:15 and he realizes he never slept at all and, fuck, he’s in trouble now.

He walks through his morning ritual like he’s sleepwalking, looking out at the dark sky that wouldn’t lighten for an hour in the November weather. “Peter isn’t worth this,” he mutters, but he knows as he says it that it’s a lie, and that acceptance is enough to get him down to the kitchen for a cup of tea.

“Yowch,” Pepper says, her own coffee in hand. He doesn’t usually see her in the morning, her own schedule beginning earlier than his, and now he only levies her a dead glare and collapses on the stool. “Long day ahead, I presume.”

“Hng.”

“Didn’t sleep well, kiddo?”

“Didn’t sleep,” he corrects into the meat of his hand.

“Well,” she places her mug in front of him, “Good luck to you,” and she goes on her merry way.

By the time Harley’s entering the café – four minutes late, shit – he’s already downed two cups of tea and the other half of Pep’s coffee, and the sight of a dirty chai next to Peter’s own hot apple cider is enough to have him sighing into the booth.

“Dirty?” he asks, hardly. Peter’s got a little smile on his face and his phone screen bright, already reading from it before the word is out of his mouth.

“H stayed up last night. No sleep and it shows. DMW. When Pep says you look like a dead man you know she means it.” It explains the drink, which Peter usually orders for him without the espresso.

“Yeah, yeah,” Harley takes a large sip. Three shots, he realizes, king shit. “Get going with your explaining thing.”

They sit in silence for a long moment, Harley’s eyes closing with gravity even as caffeine zips through his bloodstream. In another moment he’ll be more awake. Peter’s just watching him, hands keeping warm around the drink he doesn’t lift.

“Come here, dummy,” he says finally, voice laughing and kind. Harley only hums in ask so his eyes don’t have to open. “You’re so fucking stupid, come here.” He’s shuffling over in his bench, bag lifting to the other side of him for Harley to take its place and he does, sliding into the warm spot and leaning closer to the shoulder that looks so inviting. “Idiot.” Peter cups his hand around the back of his head gently, and Harley lets it fall to the fabric.

Peter finally takes a sip of his cider with the two of them resting there, the second wind catching Harley as he knew it would. With another minute, he’s more alert and nudging for Peter to begin.

“Show me what you’ve got, Mr. Man.”

“Please,” Peter laughs back quietly, “Mr. Man was my father, call me Spider. What were you doing all night?”

“Working on that idea I had. I had to somewhat start over but Pete- Peter. Peter.” His hand slaps at Peter’s thigh in excitement. “I think I got it. Molecular robotics, Pete.”

“Molecular?”

“Mhm. I’ve got a basic circuit going right now and it’s about the size of a quarter but there’s potential there, I just gotta shrink it down, figure out mechanical DNA, and put the two together.”

“Figure ou- just gotta- Harley!” Peter laughs, jostling the boy from his shoulder, “You say that like it’s simplest thing in the world. Mechanical DNA, Harls?”

“If I can transfer the DNA bimodal type-presentation process to a series of electric charges originating from one point with the ability to self-reflect upon itself I really think I could make something of it.” Now that Harley’s begun, he can’t stop. He rambles a bit more on the scope of his ideas, energy picking up like it had late the night before, inspiration striking him from all sides. Peter pulls out and then writes messily into the spiral he always has on him, words a sideways cursive that Harley knows Peter uses because it’s faster than print, and presents the page when the thought winds down.

“There, I’ve got it all,” and when Harley looks over he does see his own words in a bullet point list, “And you’ll have such a good time working on it tonight. Tonight, after you’ve rested, and after you’ve listened to me explain concepts to the air.”

“Nah,” he stretches his back to crack the bones along the bottom of it, “I’m up now. Tell me about your parasite class.”

“Bacterial pathogenesis, genius. And maybe you should be telling me with your newly realized potential.”

“I ain’t got a clue about the bio stuff, Pete, you know that. That’s why I was up so late, trying to makes sense of some Ted Talks.”

“Jesus, Harley.”

“That’s why I need you, hm? Teach me, for I am your padawan.”

“The Anakin to my Obi-Wan.”

“The Ahsoka to my Anakin,” Harley hits back.

“Not the Ahs- oh I’m not doing this again-” Peter grips the back of Harley’s head again, replacing him on his shoulder. From across the shop, Mary-At-The-Counter lifts a muffin, the same kind Harley swears by, and Peter nods at her gratefully. Two get plated, a ten spot gets left on the table, and his notes get flipped to page 1.

~

68 degrees in November is incredible and every New Yorker born-and-raised knows it, so when the weathermen tease it for that Thursday afternoon, his friends know they have to jump on their last warm day of the year. Peter’s still busy and stressed beyond belief, but he’d be that way inside or outside, so it isn’t even a question on if he goes with them. The question is if Harley will join.

In Harley’s eyes, there is absolutely no reason to be outside in the New York mid-November weather. When his coworker asked on Tuesday if he wanted to take lunch outside with her, it was a pretty resounding no, Tennessee roots not strong enough for the cold gusts he knew awaited him regardless of what the thermometers say. But when Peter asks Thursday afternoon, a little text message separate from all others, to meet him and his friends at Central Park for dinner, he agrees without a thought. Peter’s “i’ll bring tea” sent after certainly didn’t hurt the choice.

When Peter tells his friends to expect one more, they heckle him.

“Harley?” Lily says, “The Harley?”

“You don’t mean we actually get to meet him?”

“So he is real, huh? We were beginning to think we’d never know.”

Peter could give back as good as they gave him, but he rolls his eyes and stays quiet instead. A small, personal, private part of him considers calling it off, keeping Harley to himself, but he forces it away. He likes it when his friends like each other, enjoyed every time he, Ned, MJ, and Harley could hang out, so this would be good. Even if his friends are a bit much and Harley… isn’t. Could never be. Is exactly the right amount.

Regardless of it all, he thinks they’re both surprised by Harley’s decision when he’s sitting on a low wall with Peter and all his college friends. Harley had met one or two in passing, he thinks, but they all must know him by the way they greet him by name and a friendly knock of the fists.

“Harley, I’ve mentioned Lucy,” Peter says, gesturing to another, and Harley is certain he hasn’t but greets her anyway.

Peter sits with him up on the wall. Gun to his head, Harley wouldn’t’ve ever guessed that one – he would’ve put him down with his friends in the grass but Peter’s hip to hip with him up on the cold stone wall, warmth seeping between their shared seems and into skin.

“Test tomorrow?” Harley asks, as if he doesn’t have access to Peter’s digital schedule and checked it before he came.

“Yeah,” and there goes a big, heaving sigh, “I’ve just about given up on the equations.”

“Don’t know ‘em?”

“Can’t memorize them. They’re too much the same.”

“If you don’t know them,” one of his friends speaks up, the rest of the group already laughing as if they know what’s coming next, “I’ve got a foolproof way to get them into the classroom with you.” Peter rolls his eyes.

“I don’t want one of your trick calculators, but thank you.” Harley laughs a bit with the others, figuring it’s a joke, but his eyes don’t leave his friend’s twitching hands.

“Naw, I bet you got ‘em in your head, you just don’t know it.”

“I’m telling you Harls, I’ve given up.”

He takes a second, hums. Reevaluates. Switches strategies.

“Five bucks says you do.”

“Know them?”

“Mhm.”

“Hah,” Peter snorts, “You’re on.”

“Don’t goof it on purpose, Peter Parker.”

“Me?” he says, faux affront zipping between his fingertips and where they lay against his chest, “Throw the bet on purpose?”

“It’s more likely than you think.”

Peter’s college friends laugh from the ground, it’s more likely than you think and Parker throwing a fight? and not Mr. Competition himself being tossed around as if an audience to a comedy sketch. Peter forgot they were there at all. It’s awful and he tries to zoom back in to them but it’s hard with Harley here by his side.

“C’mere, darlin’,” Harley says over his mind and there it goes again, to his right where Harley is. The other boy is reaching to his ear where there’s a pen sitting on it. Usually, he keeps a pencil there, which was the first thing Peter asked about when they met up at the top of the park. The tip broke that morning, apparently, and he hadn’t bothered to sharpen it yet. Everything happens for a reason, or whatever.

He passes the pen off to Peter and offers his arm. The skin is bare and hasn’t held a tan since August of that year – has seldom held a tan since August of three years before.

“Okay,” Peter huffs beneath his breath, “okay. Okay.”

“Okay,” Lucy copies.

“Okay,” his friends say in a disjointed repetition, like a crowd of ducks quacking over and over again out of sight. They drown him out and Harley doesn’t understand it, can’t understand it – the way they act as if everything Peter says is anything other than a revelation.

“First one, Pete,” Harley says instead of dwelling, eyes never even having left the unsteady hands of the hero.

“Exponential growth phase,” he says finally, “For generation time of bacteria. n = n0 x 2T/t, where n-” as he speaks the pen strikes across Harley’s arm. It’s not comfortable, the tip sharp and ink absent until Peter scrubs the pen across his own covered thigh until the dark blue appears across the faded denim, but discomfort is easy to bear when it’s outweighed like this. “-number of divisions. b = B x 2n is also growth but now we’ve got fucking fission, which is bullshit, but-” Shit. He forgot to listen.

“I don’t remember this from the café.”

“I’d be impressed if you remembered anything from the café, you dumb bastard,” he hits back. “Did you or did you not fall asleep on me there?”

“I did not, and I’d thank you kindly to never imply again that I would.”

“Surely Harley Keener isn’t insisting he keeps a reasonable schedule?”

“Well now, don’t get carried away on that river either, darlin’.”

“Just kiss already,” Trick Calculator says with a hand covering his mouth, then looking around wildly like he wasn’t the one to say it.

“Don’t out them, Wyatt, god-” and the thing is that Harley could put forth the effort to correct the assumption being made, as he hears it clearly around him, but he’s just fished out a red pen from his bag and he’s following Peter’s hand with his own, coloring in the ovals of the 0 and each B as he computes logs that Harley can’t even begin to comprehend, so his energy is already allotted.

Peter goes to write his third equation, scribbling notes next to each that Harley underlines and circles, but the angle is awkward so Peter huffs and throws his pen-marked thigh over Harley’s own, getting all that much closer on the stone wall that doesn’t feel so cold anymore. They sit like that, sides flush and limbs overlapping in a Peter-Harley sandwich, Pete’s hand scrawling on Harley’s arm, which rests on Peter’s thigh which is tossed over Harley’s own. He fills in both circles of an 8 with red ink.

“We lost Peter,” one of the friends says from the ground, a distant sound to their ears.

“He’s with his hot SI boyfriend, what did you expect?”

“I’m pretty sure they’re just studying,” a quiet one speaks up, and Harley thinks he’s actually met her before so he makes quick eye contact. She’s studying too, pencil racing to copy the same equations Peter is explaining to his left.

“You’re blind and batty,” Wyatt teases, going for her glasses, and the crowd is reduced to jokes and laughter again. Peter and Harley are left at the wall.

~

H: test go?

P: test sure did

H: yikes?

P: *yeesh

H: well that ain’t so bad

P: turned out the equations were the easiest part

P: ty

H: how did your friend do?

“Keener,” his supervisor calls. Harley’s eyes flick over to her and then to the clock on the wall. Brief panic settles in him until he sees the time and knows he hasn’t gone over his 15.

“Yes, ma’am?” He pockets his phone.

“Did you get the numbers for today?”

“I put them in your bin this morning.”

“The completed bin?” She checks, flipping through a few forms on her clipboard.

“Yeah, ‘round 10 or so? Maybe 10:30.”

“Oh,” she reads for a moment, “So you did. Earlier than usual for you.”

His mouth goes tight for a second, quiet unsatisfaction filling him at the evidence of a supervisor paying no attention to her interns. He always performs better the days Peter is around and they would know that if they ever emerged from their offices to see.

“Easy day today,” he says instead of this.

“Easy every day,” she corrects, because of course the supervisor knows how boring and repetitive a task is, surely she knows what it’s like to be stuck on the lowest rung of the ladder. She was likely an intern long before he was, if not here then at some other tech company wanting free labor for the mindless jobs.

“Sure.”

“Mr. Keener has been working on his mechanical DNA theories since 10:24 this morning,” FRIDAY’s voice rings through the room, all activity stopping for a moment as everyone listens. FRIDAY never speaks unless prompted, and even then only a handful of people have the authority to prompt her. But here she is, selling Harley out like a snitch.

“Mechanical DNA,” his supervisor laughs, apparently the only one in the lab to know how outlandish a claim that is, everyone else returning to their busywork, “You’re kidding.”

“Yes,” he says, and almost stomps on his own foot immediately after at his own frustration with himself. This is your chance, his mind hollers, but the knowledge that he still hasn’t gotten his circuit smaller than a needlepoint stays his mouth. It isn’t done, might never get finished, so it’s not worth showing. No one needs to know about it. “A joke between me and Pete. Sorry.”

“And FRIDAY, apparently.”

“Well, she’s a super intelligent being; I can’t fault her for listening to everything Peter says.”

“You would know what that’s like.”

“Well,” he takes a second to curse Tony, because certainly this is his fault somehow. Move her along. “Yes.”

When she finally leaves, beyond the end of his break which is so fucked up by the way, he takes out his phone again.

Harley: having your supercomputer say something is still nepotism

Tony: Not sure what you’re talking about, bud.

Harley: mhm

Tony: Cross my heart kiddo. Don’t know what you’re talking about.

Harley: fri just tattled on my extracurriculars to linda

Tony: Give me a sec.

Harley huffs, getting up to throw his water cup in the recycling bin. His phone buzzes before he even finishes crossing the room. A second, indeed.

Tony: Your work alerted the same protocol that a certain Spider-Kid did when he started using his own webs six years ago. Monitors new science. Algorithms put you on the notice list for your supervisor. I had nothing to do with this one.

Tony: But mechanical DNA, Keener?

He rolls his eyes skyward. He knows it’s crazy so people can stop telling him that.

Tony: Without even giving Bruce a call?

Oh. Well now there’s a thought.

~

The next day is Saturday again, so the Stark family is gathered in the penthouse of the tower. Morgan is “braiding” Pepper’s hair on the couch, which means that she’s twisting locks together until they’re knotted, and Tony is handling a hairbrush anxiously, watching for the moment Morgan pulls too hard and he’s delegated to damage control.

“Sit down, Tony,” his wife says with a smile instead of any of that.

Harley’s got his laptop open on the coffee table, unreleased StarkPad next to it projecting a molecule he’s trying to code as electrical charges. Binary didn’t work, but Dr. Banner suggested creating a new program with a third, neutral option that sounds promising. He’s hunched over these plans, hands spinning helixes and taking hasty notes in turn.

Peter’s asleep against his back. Harley’s bent form provides a slope that he took advantage of as soon as he arrived at the tower, dropping his things by the doorway before curling against the arc of his spine. Pepper put a blanket over him when his breaths dropped off and Harley holds the corners of it now, adjusting where it was slipping away from his best friend’s form. It’s warm between them, maybe even too warm with the body heat he’s always expelled, but Harley wouldn’t wake him for the world.

“Poor thing is beat,” Pepper coos.

“Tough test,” Harley agrees, taking extra care to flip the page of his notebook in the limited space between his chin and the table.

“How does he think it went?”

“He rated it a yeesh instead of a yikes, so.”

“Oh, of course,” Tony snorts, “A yeesh. Thank god.”

Peter shuffles a little, shoulder digging further into his back. Harley screws up his face and jostles the body against him a bit, just enough that his skin will make it through the night unmottled.

“I should hide the suit on him,” Tony muses at the sight.

“Don’t you dare,” Harley and Pepper say in unison, Morgan’s no! an echo of their beliefs. “He’d kill you dead,” he continues alone.

“It’d give him a break for once.”

“Not your call, old man. Besides, he’s here now, ain’t he?”

“His body is, don’t know where he left his brain at though.”

“Shove off,” comes the sleepy reply under the quilt.

“Petey’s awake!”

“No I’m not,” he counters Morgan quickly, burrowing down.

“Yuh-huh, I heared you.”

“No he’s not,” Harley backs up, “You must’ve imagined it.”

“Oooh,” comes weekly from the blanket, “This is your imaginaaation. I’m not reeeeal.”

“Petey!”

“Peter’s asleep, bug, come on.”

“Do you have to gaslight my daughter?” Pepper laughs.

“You know how it is, Ms. Potts.”

“Gaslight gatekeep girlboss.”

“It’s survival of the fittest out here.” The words are slurring as Peter drops back into dreamland, head resting heavier near his shoulder.

“Fittest,” Harley muses, looking back to his work.

“You could stand to take a break too, techie. I’ll get you a complementary pillow and everything, curtesy of your stay at casa del Stark.”

“Sorry, there’s a house limit of one person taking care of themself at a time here and Peter called dibs.”

“Dibs,” is hardly breathed behind him.

“I miss the days when you two weren’t together,” Tony grouches, finally relaxing with his family on the couch, “I could intimidate you then.”

“You couldn’t even intimidate me when I was 12 and you were in an Iron Man suit.”

“A bungled up Iron Man suit. It hardly counts.”

“You broke into my garage.”

“Surely you were intimidated then - you were armed!”

“I was,” he says, “With potatoes.”

“Which you hit me with.”

“I hit everyone with potatoes then. Don’t take it personally.”

~

The next week they’re at work again and even Peter is struggling to pay attention to the task. He tries to be enthusiastic about all kinds of learning opportunities, but they’re doing geology busywork the likes of which he exhausted in high school. He isn’t even sure why there’s a geology lab here, given the reputation of SI to ignore the so-called soft sciences.

They’re at work again and they’re scraping minerals against glass plates, Peter in silence but Harley with music playing in his ears as he writes down the green stripe that results. They were set up at different tables -- twelve feet away, twelve feet, twelve feet -- a fact that had them both protesting but quickly shut down by Linda’s stern gaze, but Peter goes prancing over now with a sheet of notes.

(They’re at work again and Harley’s happy to see him. He wonders when it became like this, measuring his days by how many hours Peter occupies in them, but it’s a spare thought to his little count of three, three hours today.)

Peter notices when Harley picks his head up to see him but goes back to his papers when he only cross-checks their answers. It’s stupid work and they both know it, as all they’re doing is identifying materials that should have been labeled when they were delivered en masse, so what are they doing here? What help could this possibly do? Not even comparing materials, just taking inventory that they surely already had. It’s a Harley type of rant but they must spend too much time together because it’s on loop in Peter’s head too.

Or maybe he’s thinking it for Harley, what with the other boy unable to spare much energy to being an asshole lately. Peter misses it, the snark he carries with him, but he’s been pulling late hours working on the robot and Peter would never pull him off of that just because he wants to hear him bitch out some guy on a train over a shirt he’s wearing.

When he’s done comparing the samples, he puts the paper down and reaches over for one of Harley’s wireless earbuds, tugging it free easily considering how often he does so. He puts it in his own ear, flinching immediately when it’s loud and yell-y instead of the calm tones he usually prefers during work. Maybe Harley is mad about the task, or at least petulant enough to show his displeasure, if only to himself. Peter almost gives the earbud back but Harley is moving before he can begin to, absently tapping on his phone screen and skipping once, twice, three times before a calmer song starts to play. He hits the volume button, too, while he’s at it, never even looking away from the rock in his hand. Light grey he writes on his paper.

Peter scribbles over it with his own pencil, writes gray above. Harley bats his hands away and fixes it again, writing the e enough times that it’s bolded, and Peter goes at him with the eraser.

“Spelling it with an ‘A’ is ugly, Pete, and you know that.”

“That’s the American way, Harls.”

He dead-eyes him. “Because you care so much about America.”

“Red and blue, baby.” Harley laughs but it looks like it’s against his wishes. Pride thrums through Peter like a thrill. “You have way more granite than me,” he adds hastily, waving his paper.

“Can’t imagine why we need so much of it.”

“You know, for those nice kitchen countertops we have running throughout the offices.”

Harley snorts.

“Funny.”

He notes the last mineral, no streak, and then dumps it in the box with the rest of them and pushes it away, holding his own paper up with his sweetest smile.

“Hey honey,” he prompts, tone slick with sugar and syrup and eyes wide and baby blue.

“No.”

“Would you be a dear-”

“Do it yourself, Keener.”

“Would you be just the most wonderful friend in the world and hand this in for me, darling?”

“Do your legs work? Yes? Then use them.”

“My legs? I- Oh no. Oh no, baby, they’ve just cramped up so terribly, I’m afraid I can’t walk.” He sighs all put-upon. “Won’t you be an absolute doll-”

“Harley- for god’s sake.” Harley’s opening his mouth, clearly preparing another pet name, and Peter prepares himself to shut it down again (not even “sweetheart” will get him into Dr. Schaffer’s office to face an inquisition) when the song shifts over the headphones they’re still sharing. It’s another loud one and Peter’s shoulders hike up but it’s only for a second, half a second, hardly even that because Harley’s hands are just as fast and has already pulled open his music app to change the playlist, tapping on one titled only peter. Peter.

“Swee-”

“Okay fine,” he rushes out, and he can’t even manage that annoyance he was going for.

“Thanks Pete.” Harley says, voice back to normal and not the sickly tone he was using before. There’s a stupid grin on his face. It occurs to Peter that he doesn’t even know what he’s done. Never even realizes the wonderful things he’s always doing.

(When Harley switches the playlist he chooses something lighter, closer to the way his heart beats half off the mark for three hours every Wednesday. It’s got Peter’s name in the title and he- well he knows what that means but no one else needs to.)

“God, I hate you.”

If it’s a lie, then it’s okay. Because if it’s a lie, they both know it.

“You shouldn’t be mean to me when I love you so much, darlin’, it could really set you back in the polls for best intern.”

“Is it nice, in your head?” Peter asks, taking the paper and standing straight. “Deep in these magical worlds you build?”

“You tell me, is it nice winning the man of my dreams award seven years in a row there?”

“Shut up, Keener. I haven’t even known you seven years.”

“Oh baby,” he says with a laugh, “I feel like I’ve known you forever.”

~

Peter’s squatting on some roof in Queens, ears attuned to the world but eyes stuck to the light of his phone screen. Planes pass overhead, cars whizz by underfoot, but his eyes are stuck. He can feel the stupid little grin twisting his lips which he ignores, typing rapidly with his gloved thumbs.

H: to make a long story short

H: half of the key is in the ignition and the other half is on the kitchen counter

P: that is 100% more pieces of key than there should be

H: try and tell me there wouldntve been more if tony was there

P: where WAS tony

H: this aint about him

P: IT’S HIS CAR

Yelling from a few streets over has Peter quickly pulling his mask down and webbing over, creeping up the bricks until he finds the image of a few drunk teens walking home. The yelling is just playful arguing and shrieking so he sits back on his haunches to supervise while also pulling his phone back out.

H: teck nick lee it is his car however its sexy so ive stolen it

H: and now he cant drive it. win!

P: i count no winners here

H: not with that attitude you wont

“Look it’s Spider-Man!” he hears suddenly, popping the bubble he lives in. The dim lights in his periphery now blind him, blinking away spots in his corners. He looks up at where the group of drunk teens have moved to, only one more street away but now spilled out across the sidewalk and giggling helplessly. It’s a wonder any of them recognized his shadow against the wall at all, what with the way their vision was surely spinning.

“Hey there,” he hops off the wall and lands, walking towards them, “Need any help over here?”

“Do a- do a- do a spin!”

“A spin?” He asks in kind bemusement; usually it’s a flip or a pose or a leap, at the least.

“It’s a flip,” one hisses to the other. Peter’s smile stretches larger.

“Do any of y’all need help getting home?”

“Y’all,” they all start laughing, those who had settled now going off again.

“You from the south, Spider-Man?”

“No.” Peter goes over to the one that looks a bit sick and lifts them from the ground, putting them in a sitting position with their head between their knees. He pats their back. “Hang out there for a second until your head has settled. I’m not but my friend is.”

“Your frieeeend, who is she?”

“Who are they, don’t be fucking rude, Kathryn.”

“You’ve still gone and asked Spider-Man about his love life!”

At the vibration, Peter pulls out his phone again, leaving the kids to bicker. The sounds on the street are muted when he turns away.

H: update: the key is now in three parts

He can’t help the full laugh that comes out of him, hand flying up to muffle it. It shatters the world around him anyway.

P: what else was there to break!

P: which one!

P: did you fuck up further on the car or break the piece on the counter for fun?????

“I wonder what they’re saying,” one whispers.

“Imagine texting Spider-Man,” says another. He tucks his phone away again and claps his hands together.

“All right folks, do any of youse need help gettin’ anywhere?”

After he gets the teens home (“just to cover my bases I feel I should tell you not to drink until you’re legal” “don’t be lame, Spidey”) he swings over to the tower. He tries to stay near Queens, but he always ends up on the numbered streets of Manhattan when he’s texting-and-patrolling, counting 47 blocks, 46 blocks, 45 as he gets closer.

He peers into the windows as he crawls up them, each unfrosting for his eyes before going back to their privacy settings as he moves along. He finds Harley in one of the lesser-used labs, surely trying to hide the broken key from Tony for as long as possible.

“Karen, can you get me in?” he asks, and she works with FRIDAY to open the window for him to flip through.

“..said the jet could leave whenever but I already told him Tuesday night…”

Peter pulls the mask off from his head as soon as he recognizes who Harley is talking to, reaching for Harley’s discarded MIT hoodie to pull over his suit and tugging the strings tight so no red or blue shows around his neck. Then he walks over to the computer and sticks his head next to Harley’s. Their ears tap together when he tilts his head, the metal of an earring cool against him.

“…really matter so it’s up to you. My bags will be packed either way. Cold, darlin’?”

“A bit. Hi Mrs. Macy, hi Abby.”

“Hi honey, how are you?”

“Good, ma’am, and yourself?”

“Not too bad. You two boys doing anything fun tonight?”

“Just a night in, Mama.” Harley reaches out in front of him as he talks and Peter notices for the first time the bowl in front of him containing apple slices with cinnamon sugar on top.

“Did your snack decide to go for a cinnamon bath?”

“There’s not that much on them,” Harley protests, “They’re lightly dusted.”

“They’re coated.”

“They’re sprinkled, baby.” As he talks, he takes an apple slice from the very bottom, disrupting the, yes, veritable hill of cinnamon sugar atop it, and wipes it on the rim of the bowl for good measure. Then he brings it up to Peter’s mouth to bite.

“Are you feeding me?” Peter murmurs with a smirk, lips parting despite the jokes he still has queued up.

“Not if you’re a bastard about it.”

“Aw, lovey, no,” and he says it with a cutesy inflection, because it’s supposed to be a joke, it is, but he still hears Abby in the background go disgusting I have to go bleach my mind immediately and he still sees Harley’s smile go soft in that way it only does when they’re together, so maybe it comes out a little more real than he means it.

He bites the apple slice in half and chews.

Harley brings the other half to his own mouth, opens it, waits. They’re still like that for a moment, the two of them quiet and watching each other, until Harley laughs and looks away, dunking the apple into his cinnamon mound and popping the thing in his mouth to eat.

“Heathen. Can’t enjoy a good apple on its own.”

“It’d be even better baked down in a pie.”

“Okay fool, you have hands. Butter.”

“And no desire to make a pie at ten at night, thanks for listing those out for me, darlin’.”

“Are you both finished?” Macy Keener asks on the video chat, eyebrows raised but mouth gentle like her son’s.

“Yes, ma’am, sorry, I was just stopping by.” Peter ruffles at Harley’s wild curls (which turns soft without his permission, into more of a scratch behind his ears than a shake) and then shoves the whole head away, stepping out of the view of the camera.

“Do you and your aunt have Thanksgiving plans, Peter?”

“Nah, not really one of our chosen holidays. May usually works that day and trust me, you don’t want to brave the stores in New York that weekend.” He fiddles with his webshooters while he speaks, popping out the fluid cartridges and pulling two more from the suit pocket to replace them. He’ll have to refill them on Saturday.

“I bet. Why don’t you come on down with Harley and spend a few days with us?”

“Down to Rose Hill?”

“Where else would we go down to?”

“Shove it, Keener. We’re already spending this weekend together, are you gonna get sick of me?” It’s a tease but it’s not ungenuine. He imagines Harley saying yes, saying I’m sick of you every day, saying I never want you near me. His mouth dries up, air in the room all of the sudden too thin.

“I’d never get sick of you.”

He breathes out, pressure rebalancing like a scale, like a row of vials. Walls flattening back into place.

“Gross. Where’d Abby go? I need some of whatever she’s having.”

“You can get some in Rose Hill, fancy that.” Despite his words, Peter still drops both cartridges to his left hand to sign are you sure? The air in the room dries up. Harley gives a little nod. He breathes.

“Yeah, alright. I’d love to see you both again. Thank you for the invite, Mrs. Macy, what can I bring?”

“Don’t be silly, honey, just bring yourself.”

Yeah, like I’m gonna do that. “Yes, ma’am.”

She tsks. “So polite. I’m not sure there’s a more polite city boy, baby.”

“And you like that, huh?”

Peter ignores them, choosing instead to check his phone one last time before swinging back to Queens. He replies to Ned about a movie he’s watching and then tucks it away, shrugging out of the sweatshirt when he’s done. He leaves it where he found it and gives a little wave to Harley before he goes.

H: shes serious dont bring anything

P: i heard her

H: peter

P: don’t bring anything except myself and also several types of pie. i heard her

H: do not bring pie

H: if youre gonna be a kiss up about this we can make pies here but do not force happy to violate air travel restrictions for you

P: he would do worse if i asked it of him

P: i’m bringing apples

H: we have apples in tennessee

P: fuck your apples

~

“Knock knock.”

“Hey, come on in!”

“He’s holding the mac and cheese,” Peter says immediately while shouldering his way into the hallway of the house.

“There is no mac and cheese,” Harley answers in a way that belies how long-suffering the answer is.

“Kick him out anyway.”

“I’m not going to kick him out until he does something that offends me. Though the hair does put him on thin ice. Hello, Peter.”

“Hi, MJ.” He gives her a quick hug and then does a handshake with Ned, one considerably shorter than the one from high school.

“Hey Harley,” Betty greets from her corner, “I was going to let them catch up a bit. How have you been?”

Harley walks over to her, placing their plates on the table as he goes by. “Good, and yourself?”

“Really good, thanks. The Bugle already asked if I was looking to make my internship a full-time gig when I graduate.”

“Oh that’s great, Betty, how is that whole job going?” He settles down next to her.

“It’s alright. It’s editing, so I like that, but my boss might be too much of an asshole to stick around. How’s SI?”

“Pretty busy and horribly boring at the same time.”

“Well, at least you have Peter with you, right?”

“For a few hours a week, not nearly enough to make me forgive them for all the busywork.”

“No?” She looks contemplative. “You work well together, then?”

“Yeah, he’s a great partner.” Harley looks over at Peter, who has his hands over his eyes and is saying something surely ridiculous.

“Hm. Ned might do some contract jobs for the Bugle and I wondered how it was working with your boyfriend. I shouldn’t have asked you though; of course the two of you make it work.”

“Oh?” Harley takes a second. He laughs. “Oh, we aren’t dating.”

“You’re not?”

“No, no, where did you get that idea from?”

“Oh, well it’s, you know,” she gestures to her own person, waving her hand up down, “Everything, I guess. I really thought you were?”

“Nah, he’s my best friend. Don’t let Ned get jealous though, whatever they have between them is untouchable. It freaks me out sometimes.”

“Oh, you are not kidding,” she laughs, finger tracing around the rim of her stemmed glass, “Their conversations are incomprehensible.”

~

On the Monday before Thanksgiving, Peter and Harley are assigned to the biology lab again. Harley looks down at the same experiments they perform every time and sighs.

“Maybe science isn’t for me,” he says to Peter, privately.

“Oh, come on, Harls. You’ve never had to be one for science.” Peter falls into his chair and wheels over to the desk they usually share. “No one ever said you had to be good at all four letters in STEM.”

“I haven’t made any progress on my project in a week,” he confesses like it’s the most horrible secret. Like it says more about him than he wants it to.

“Alright, what are you stuck on?”

Harley explains it all rather quickly, not because it’s simple but because late nights find him repeating the same words over and over to himself in his bed, this internship good for, if nothing else, being trained in repetition. He talks about the circuit he’s nearly completed, microscopic and only capable of being put together in Tony’s own lab where FRIDAY can help him, and then mentions the DNA that he’s almost got figured out. All the while, Peter takes his bullet-point list on his ever-present spiral.

“But the shapes don’t fit together,” he finishes, “I can’t figure out how to code the DNA in a way where I can then fit it into the circle. A double helix will never be small enough, not if I’m going molecular.”

“Well,” Peter looks down at his notes and hums, “I’ve got some ideas. If we do the experiments quickly today, we can use the rest of the time to brainstorm. How’s that?”

They do go through the experiments quickly, Peter in his element the way he always is with anything biology or chemistry and Harley happy to play lab assistant like he’s in the time-twisting cold garage from high school. They work around each other like they’re two parts of a whole, Peter with his spidey sense to know where Harley always is, and Harley with his eyes ever-focused. His eyes always centered on what matters most.

(Peter doesn’t say it but he’s never needed to use his sixth sense on Harley. It’s like he has one built in, constantly rolling numbers, always calculating the distance he is from every spare elbow, every last footfall. The proximity to every spare thought he has. Distance is often negligible.)

When they finish, Harley takes their finished worksheets to the supervisor at her desk, slipping them into the completed bin as always.

“Mr. Keener,” she says before he can go.

“Yes?”

“Quite fast again today.” He holds back a sigh. Why does she only try to talk to him when he has other things to do?

“Peter is very good at biology.”

“I have more numbers to be gathered if you and Mr. Parker have your hands free.”

His heart freezes for a second, eighteen years in Tennessee making him want to fight – three years in Cambridge forcing the bloody beating to start again no matter the unsteady rhythm. He opens his mouth to agree.

“Mr. Keener and Mr. Parker were planning to brainstorm cohesive protein structures for molecular robotics after their initial experiments,” FRIDAY’s voice rings out. Dr. Schaffer looks up to the ceiling with a frown. Harley bites his lip.

“Is this what we were talking about a few weeks ago?” she asks.

“Yeah, I- uh, I got it to where I’m almost happy with it.”

Then this woman, his supervisor, the one in charge of them, laughs and says “Oh yeah? You work out mechanical DNA yet, Miescher?” and he has to take a breath. He clenches his hand, ignoring Rose Hill, and says as calmly as he can muster:

“No, I haven’t, but I think if I had the time and proper materials and clearance, I could really do it.” It isn’t quite true, as his access to materials as Tony’s mentee is far greater than what she could promise him and it hasn’t proven to be enough so far, but it still feels good to say it.

“No lab director in the country has figured that one out, Mr. Keener. I would advise you to keep your goals reasonable. Here are the other trials-” and when she goes to hand the additional papers to Harley, FRIDAY speaks up again like the angel she is.

“Mr. Keener’s ideas have a 92.861% chance of being successful with 4.3% room for calculated error.” She pulls back her hand in shock.

“92 percent?” He muses, backing for the door, cold time spinning in his head, Rose Hill clenched in his fist. “I’ll take those odds. I’m afraid my hands aren’t free, Dr. Schaffer. Sorry.”

Harley: your supercomputer cheated again

Harley: give her a little treat for me please

Tony: What sort of treat do you expect me to give an AI?

Harley: oh gosh oh hum

Harley: if only you knew tony stark so he could figure it out for you

~

Every time Harley slots his key into the swinging front door of the little two-story home and the lock turns, his heart slows down. Opening the door to the milky heat of a Keener Thanksgiving is the surest coming home he has. It’s never felt more true this year when he holds the screen for Peter to follow him through.

“We’re here,” he yells, voice stretching on the vowels so they’ll take him back. As if they’d toss him away just because he doesn’t say his r’s like he used to.

“In the kitchen,” his mama calls back, and he can’t stop his smile. Peter steps up behind him and rids his shaking fingers of their bags, nudging him with a knee to go say hello.

“Be there in a minute,” Peter offers, and sits down with the bags in the entryway of Harley’s childhood home.

Peter hadn’t ever been there before, only ever meeting Macy and Abby across a screen and for Harley’s graduation six months before, but his hair is the same color as the interior paneling and his shoes track mud in the same way Harley’s do, and everything feels right for a moment. Harley goes off to see his family, but Peter idles, shrugging off his jacket and keeping his footprints to the mat.

“Where in the heavens did you leave your boy, Harley James?” Macy scolds through the wall and Peter tips his head back to laugh.

“He ain’t my boy, Mama.”

“Don’t act a fool with me. You think I lost my sight already, do you?”

Peter bounds through the hall to intercept the questioning, not wanting to hear this conversation again without being part of it. Without giving his own say.

“Hey,” someone greets before he gets there, and when he looks to the left it’s Abby Keener. She’s taller than he remembers. “Welcome to hell. Did you park your jet in the corn field or the other corn field?”

“Didn’t park it,” he answers easily, “Did a 500 meter freefall.”

“You’re joking,” she says. He doesn’t answer. She stares him down, lips and eyes thinning like this is the hardest math problem she’s ever had to answer.

“My parachute didn’t deploy but I have very flexible knees.”

She snorts and turns away. “Too much. You, Harls, and the jet are taking me shopping in the city on Friday.”

“Me, Pete, and the car can take you shopping in town on Friday,” Harley says, coming from the kitchen to swing his arm around Peter’s shoulder, “That’s my offer. Take it or leave it.”

“We’ll circle back,” she shouts over her shoulder before disappearing into a different room.

“Come on, darlin’,” Harley says only for him, “I’ll give you a tour, ‘fore Mama chews my ear off again.”

They end up around a table that night, three seasoned warriors sitting with a hand of cards each while Peter hangs against Harley’s back. They’re playing Spades and after two rounds Peter has given up on understanding it.

“It ain’t hard,” Abby rolls her eyes.

“I’m too used to Euchre,” he says for the fourth time. That was the game May taught him when he used to only visit, not live with them. She played it a lot back then, before she became a mom.

“You’re gonna have to learn Spades if you meet Harley’s gran, my mama. Won’t let you ‘round the table otherwise.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he says easily, chin never unhooking from Harley’s clavicle. Another two cards are placed on the table and Peter leans closer, placing his folded left arm around Harley’s shoulder and reaching the other out to tap on one of his cards. “Play that one.”

Harley breathes a little laugh, shaking his head so the hair brushes at both of their cheeks. “I can’t play that.”

“Okay play that one.”

“Not a chance,” Harley places a different card which gets swept away. Peter points to the king of spades soundlessly. “You’re gonna make us lose, dumbass,” he says fondly, but plays the card.

“Idiot,” Abby crows and sweeps the hand.

“Whoops.”

“We’ve found something you’re not good at, love,” Love. Their cheeks really are so close together. An inch and a half, maybe two. They’re so close. “I didn’t think that was possible.”

“Don’t ask anyone else,” he plays it off, because that’s what they always do, “Or they’ll disrupt this false notion you have of me.”

“I don’t know if that’s possible, Pete. I don’t know if that’s true at all.”

~

Three days later, after a full day visiting every nearby city Abby wants, they drive back to the Keener family home during golden hour. For as much as he insisted he would never need it in New York, Peter learned how to drive a car just in case when he accepted a halfway position on the Avengers. He’s grateful for it now, taking the empty country streets back to Rose Hill while his two favorite occupants of the town drift off in the other seats. Shopping tuckered Abby out, leaving her asleep in the back with the bags. Every fifteen minutes she jerks awake, looking out the window and making eye contact with Peter in the rearview; he meets her unknown standard each time, her eyelids slipping shut and trusting him to get her home.

Peter has his hands on the wheel but his eyes catch road signs as they pass by. Six miles to Medina, eight miles to Humboldt, fourteen to Atwood. One hundred to happiness, one thousand to forever. Harley is crouched in the passenger seat, head hidden in his propped knees, and Peter wonders why some days the distance feels so easy to cross.

“Tired?” he asks instead of this.

“Nah.”

Peter has a terrible vision of a sudden stop, of some mess on the road that leads to a hard brake, and Harley’s boney knees pressing too deep into his eye sockets. Of a disaster not even he, not even Mr. Stark can reverse. He shudders. He changes to an empty lane.

“You’re so full of shit.” He keeps his voice down so it doesn’t wake Abby, but Harley still hears, pressing a shut-eyed grin to his thighs.

His hands are on the wheel, ten and two, but his eyes are catching road signs as they blur by. Sixty miles to Memphis, eighty miles to Nashville. A million to something worth having. A couple feet for something he has. Peter wonders why some days the space stretches the same way. He grips his own thigh with his right hand. He imagines a sudden stop. He returns it to the wheel.

“You know I love you, right?” He doesn’t mean to say it, but then again he does. They never say it. Suddenly it seems imperative that he say it. “You gotta know that.”

Harley finally lifts his head, cheekbones red and striped from the lines on his pants, eyes blinking away white spots.

“‘Course I do.”

“Good. Just making sure.”

Harley eyes him, gaze measured in the southern sun that sets from orange to red. Peter’s mind, always full, finds room to fit it in.

“Do you wanna talk about it, darlin’?” Peter’s eyes flick up to the rearview, meeting Abby’s own, sleepy and trusting.

“No,” he says softly, “We don’t have to.” They never have.

“Okay,” Harley says. Another time. Peter counts the distance likes he’s starving -- two feet -- and Harley crosses it like he’s empty, left hand taking his right one from the wheel. Peter imagines a sudden stop. He lets Harley hold him.