“He’s got ‘rebel without a cause’ written all over him.”
Saturday, June 18
“Alright, kid, if someone offers you alcohol, what do you do?”
“Don’t drink it?”
“Wrong. Don’t drink enough to puke or pass out, but a couple drinks is fine.”
“Er… right.”
“What about if they offer you drugs?”
“Leave?”
“Not unless you don’t want to try them. If you do, shoot me a text first so I can check and make sure you don’t have a bad reaction or a shit trip, but a little shitty weed probably won’t kill you.”
“You’re serious?”
“No, that’s your godfather. Got your phone?”
“Yes.”
“Laser?”
“Yes.”
“Condoms?”
“Bloody hell.” Harry grabbed the handle of the car door and scowled at Tony. He hesitated before opening it, “You don’t really want me to drink and do drugs and—” Harry’s face burnt bright red, “— do that, do you?”
“Nah,” Tony grinned. “I don’t care if you do, just to be clear, but be smart about it, alright?”
Harry had no intention of doing any of those things, so his agreement was probably a moot point.
To be fair, Harry also had no intention of going to the party in the first place. He’d been surprised when Peter even invited him, but Peter begged, telling Harry it would somehow be more fun if he’d go, so Harry told him he’d ask. And, as he’d done nothing but piss Tony off since Tony ruined Harry’s chances of helping Sirius get free, Harry didn’t plan on asking because he didn’t expect to be let out of their place for the rest of summer.
Then, not only was Tony not even going to take a swing at Harry or lock him inside his room for the next month, the mad man went and flew to England and chatted with Sirius and offered to help him clear his name.
It was embarrassing, having Tony do all that when Harry had been a prick, it was worse when Harry saw that Tony wasn’t just a good person when he was with his team of literal superheroes, he was a good person in other ways too.
And he was stuck with Harry.
“Do I just… walk back after?” Harry asked slowly, unsure if he could even find his way back on foot. He could probably ride a bus, but he hadn’t seen any stops in the posh neighborhood Peter’s friend Gwen lived in.
“What? No, kid, just call me if you need a ride,” Tony said, sounding surprised by Harry’s question. “Don’t ride with anyone you don’t trust, and don’t ride with anyone that’s been drinking, even if ‘it was only one drink’, alright? I’ll be awake anyway, I’ve got an idea on how to reconfigure the StarkCar engine where it uses less fuel and could even improve the horsepower.”
“Er… right.” Harry had no idea what that last bit meant. “I’ll just… see you later then.”
As soon as Harry got out of the car, he kind of wished he’d stayed in it.
He looked up at the huge house, bit of a mansion really, that Peter’s friend lived in and tried to figure out how he was meant to find the one person he knew in the crowds of what looked like hundreds of teenagers all laughing and spilling from the front porch all over the lawn. The music inside the house was so loud that Harry could hear it from the sidewalk where he stood.
Harry nervously checked his phone as he slowly made his way toward the front door. He sent Peter a text, simply saying he was there, and then tripped over someone before he even got to the door. Harry stumbled and caught himself on the rail for the porch. He would have apologized, had the words on the tip of his tongue, but felt his neck heat up at the loud laughter behind him.
“What the hell?” Harry snapped. He turned and glared at the bloke who seemed to be the one laughing the most. He was a few inches taller than Harry, muscular in a sort of beater type of build, and had a shaved head that reminded Harry of Gregory Goyle. “Something funny?” Harry added when the bloke and his circle of friends kept snickering at him.
“Walk much?” the one that looked a bit like Goyle laughed.
Harry wasn’t going to be bullied by some prat who reminded him of the worst student in Hogwarts. He had his pride, sort of.
“Not at all,” Harry drawled, gaining the interest of the nearby teens. “I do most of my transport in the air, obviously.”
All in all, not one of Harry’s better lines, but he was rather embarrassed.
“Yeah?” The bloke looked Harry over while his idiot friends exchanged gleeful looks. The bloke took a step toward Harry and scoffed, “You should walk more often, might help you grow.”
“You should read a book more often, might expand your understanding of growth in the human body.”
The bloke looked puzzled for a moment, then furious. “You saying I’m stupid?”
Harry stood his ground as he took another step towards him. Sure, he’d lose a fight against him, but he wasn’t going to look like a prat and run off either.
“Excellent,” Harry deadpanned. “You’ve interpreted my incredibly subtle insult, five points to team dunderhead.”
Harry silently thanked Professor Snape for teaching him a dozen different ways to call someone a moron. If Harry learned nothing else in that classroom, he learned how to make someone feel like an absolute idiot.
And, just as Harry never appreciated the insults, neither did this bloke it seemed.
The bloke actually growled and tightened his fists as his side and Harry braced himself for the coming blow when—
“Oh. My. God. Are you British?!”
Harry turned just enough to glance at whoever was talking and saw a girl with black braids and a blue dress on staring at him with probably half a dozen other girls in similar dresses of different colors beside her.
Since it seemed like the girl’s question paused the prat in his tracks, Harry figured it wouldn’t hurt to answer her.
“Yeah?”
The squeals those girls made did actually hurt his ears.
The girl with the braids reached out and snagged Harry by his jacket, yanking him over to her.
“Ignore Flash,” she said sweetly, “he’s a total dick.”
One of the girls in a pink dress began batting her lashes at him, “What’s your name?”
“Harry.”
“Ooh, where are you from?”
Before he could even answer, they were all asking questions.
“He’s from England, duh, stupid. Where do you go to school? How old are you?”
“Are you friends with Gwen? Ugh, trust her to have a cute British friend!”
“How do I earn five points, Harry?”
“Oh my God! Are you and Gwen like together?”
Harry found himself suddenly surrounded by teenage girls and entirely bemused by their giggles. They seemed less interested in hearing his answers than they were simply asking him a million of them at rapid fire speeds. Just as Harry was wishing he had his Invisibility Cloak, he heard a familiar voice.
“Hey! Harry!”
The girls parted a little to make way for Peter to slide through.
“Thank god,” Harry muttered. He’d honestly rather have gotten into a fight with the bloke they called Flash than deal with giggling girls.
Peter squished through and shook his head playfully at the girl with braids. “Shani, you can’t steal my friend.”
The girl smiled at Harry and winked. “I definitely could.”
“Harry, you meet these guys?”
Harry shook his head and Peter listed off names too quickly for him to ever have a hope of remembering them.
“Come on, you want a drink?” Peter asked him. He threw his arm over Harry’s shoulders and guided him inside, through the group of giggling and whispering girls.
“Mate, thank you,” Harry sighed. “I went from getting into a fight into getting mobbed.”
Peter glanced over at him and grinned, “Which was worse?”
“The girls,” Harry said drily, “there were too many to fight.”
Peter laughed, the colorful lights flashing in the large, posh, and packed living room they entered shooting odd sparkles on his teeth.
“I heard someone say there was a ‘cute British guy’ outside and figured they meant you,” Peter yelled over the sound of the music thrumming through the house. “I guess nobody appreciated the accent where you lived before?”
“I don’t have a bloody accent,” Harry yelled back. They turned and entered a kitchen where Peter barely even slowed before he grabbed two glass bottles of coke and veered off toward a back door. “You lot are the ones with the accents,” Harry said in a more normal tone once they stepped out back and the music was more tolerable background noise.
He looked around and saw there were a lot less people standing around back there as well. There were probably a dozen or so people sitting around a giant swimming pool and another dozen inside the pool, splashing and laughing.
“Whatever you say, ‘mate’,” Peter laughed. “Here,” he handed Harry one of the drinks, “where’s Joey at tonight?”
“He’s actually attacking Flash for me,” Harry said. “I liked his odds.”
Peter laughed again. “Yeah, Flash is an asshole, man. Oh, hey, there’s Gwen. Gwen! Come meet Harry!”
A blonde girl in the pool turned and smiled at Peter and Harry felt a twist of something in his stomach.
“She’s pretty,” he said lightly as the girl climbed out of the pool, showcasing a bright green two piece swimsuit. She shook her hair out and grabbed a nearby towel, wrapping it around her waist and making her way toward them.
“Who? Gwen?” Peter looked at Harry for a moment before shrugging. “I guess so.”
Gwen bounced over to them and smiled brightly at Harry, further proving that she was actually quite pretty. She stuck her hand out at him, “You must be Harry! I’ve heard allll about you!”
Harry accepted her hand, shooting Peter a curious look that the other boy shrugged at.
“I told her you adopted Joey and you’re BFF’s with Captain America,” Peter explained.
“And that you’re British, and soo funny, and—”
“Alright, alright, Jesus, Gwen,” Peter stuck his hand over her mouth. “Anyone ever tell you that you talk too much?”
“Every teacher I’ve ever had,” Gwen grinned after Peter released her. “Come sit, guys! Harry, tell me everything about yourself!”
“Gwen thinks she’s a reporter,” Peter muttered to Harry as they rearranged some of the white wicker chairs into a little grouping for them to sit.
“I can hear youuu,” Gwen sang. She sat and primly crossed her legs before turning to Harry. “And since Peter here thinks he’s a photographer, we make a great pair.”
Harry figured they did. They were both friendly, good-looking, and probably had loads in common. He made a noncommittal hum and then Gwen jumped in with her questions.
“Peter said you’re not staying long?” she asked. “Are you going back to England soon?”
“Er… no,” Harry said slowly. He picked at a hole in his jeans, something Tony said was ‘fashionable’ when he bought them, and felt his mood dip. “I’m staying here, I guess.”
“Really?” Harry glanced up and Gwen was positively beaming, which was a bit odd since she didn’t even really know him. “Yay! Are you going to Midtown with us in the fall?”
“It’s our school,” Peter explained again when Harry must have looked confused. “Midtown High School.”
“Oh. Maybe,” Harry said uncertainly. “I’ve got no idea, actually.”
He hadn’t planned on being in New York long. Certainly not forever. He still needed to learn magic, he thought… and he’d need a wand… and to figure out what school he’d be going to.
“Where did you go to school before?” Gwen asked.
“It was a boarding school, very private, very boring,” Harry smirked. Maybe Hogwarts was boring, if you weren’t Harry Potter. Harry certainly never got an opportunity to be bored though.
“Oh, no,” Peter groaned dramatically before taking a swig of his drink and pushing his brown hair off his forehead. “You’re a prep kid!”
“No way! He’s a total jock!” Gwen laughed. “Harry, what totally stereotypical teenage American cliché do you identify with the most?”
“All of them,” Harry said seriously. He took a drink then glanced between the two of them, “What’s that mean, anyway?”
“It’s like this,” Peter scooted his chair closer to Harry, “see those girls swimming?”
Harry glanced at a group of giggling girls in pink swimsuits who were doing a lot more splashing than swimming and nodded.
“Prep kids,” Gwen told him with a glimmer of amusement in her eyes. “And you met our dear friend Flash?”
“We’re well acquainted,” Harry said.
“He’s a jock,” Peter said. “Those kids with the green and blue hair over there,” he pointed to a group of kids that looked like they were smoking, “art kids.”
“So you’re a prep kid then?” Harry asked the two of them.
“How dare you, sir?” Peter clutched his chest. “I am a nerd!”
Harry looked over his shaggy hair, his lopsided smile, his blue jeans, red trainers, and black tshirt. If Peter was a nerd, then he was a much better looking one than Hermione had ever been.
“And I’m a chameleon,” Gwen sniffed haughtily with a toss of her blonde hair. “I fit in everywhere.”
That one Harry believed.
“Well I was a Gryffindor at my last school, but being an art kid looks more fun,” Harry said. “Do I just dye my hair blue or are there tryouts?”
“Hey! Brittany! Harry wants to join your cliché!” Gwen abruptly yelled across the yard, drawing attention to their group.
“Cool,” ‘Brittany’, the girl with the green streaked hair said in a lazy drawl. She looked Harry over and smiled, “You’re in.”
“Brilliant, I’ll buy the hair dye tomorrow,” Harry told her.
“What?”
Gwen let out a loud peal of laughter and looked approvingly at Harry. “You’re going to fit right in,” she said. “Now tell me what a Gryffindor is?”
Harry talked a little about Hogwarts, mostly just explaining the different houses and the points system. He left out the obvious bits about magic and just made it sound like they took a test to decide which house they got. He probably wouldn’t have said as much, but if he was going to be stuck in New York, he figured Peter and Gwen would be decent enough friends to have.
“So there’s smart kids, nice kids, brave kids, and sneaky kids?” Peter asked him. He had his knees drawn up to his chest, his chin resting on them, and had been giving Harry his complete attention while Harry talked. “That’s a weird way to decide where people sleep.”
Harry laughed at that. “It’s also for teams and the points thing means whichever house has the most points at the end win a trophy. It’s…” Harry had mixed feelings about his time at Hogwarts, but it had been his first home where he met his first friends. “It makes more sense if you’re there,” he said.
“And what did you say it was called?” Gwen asked. Her tone was innocent enough, but there was a keen look on her face and, honestly, Harry didn’t trust anyone who wanted to be a reporter.
“I didn’t,” he said. “Do all of you go to Midtown then?”
“Evasive, I like it,” Gwen winked. “Most of us do, but when I sent out invites I said to bring a friend, so there’s probably some kids from the local high school too. Oh! Do you live near here? Maybe you’ll go to their school?”
“Er… I guess I live in Manhattan,” Harry said with an uncomfortable shrug of his shoulders.
“You guess?”
“Well I wasn’t planning on staying, you see, then I was kidnapped and adopted against my will and now I’m stuck.”
“You were kidnapped?” Peter asked. “By who?”
“My biological father.”
“How can your biological father kidnap you?” Gwen asked him.
“With his lawyers, I assume.”
Peter grinned at Harry’s dry tone. “Is Captain America your kidnapper? Because I’ll totally fight him. I’d lose, no doubt, but man, what a way to go.”
“Mm… wrong Avenger,” Harry said slowly. Tony hadn’t told him he couldn’t say they were related. He’d even told Harry that he could bring people over if he wanted… and it wasn’t as if his house was a mystery seeing as people stood in front of the tower for photos. “Think younger, more metal limbs, and much more annoying.”
“Shut up!” Gwen gasped and covered her mouth with her own hand. “Oh my god, how did I not see it? I am a terrible reporter! You look just like him!”
“Holy shit,” Peter looked hard at Harry and grinned. “You totally do.”
“I like to think I’m better looking,” Harry said sarcastically as he averted his eyes from the close scrutiny of the two of them.
“Oh you definitely are.”
Harry glanced away from the pool to Peter and felt his face get hot at Peter’s crooked grin and Gwen’s quiet giggles. He didn’t actually feel like being made fun of.
“There’s a lot less drugs and alcohol here than Tony made it sound like,” Harry said, trying to change the subject very subtly. “He gave me a whole speech about it the whole drive here.”
“Let me guess, hugs not drugs?” Peter grinned.
“He told me to try them,” Harry said flippantly with a roll of his eyes. “He’s mad.”
“You know, I actually expected that,” Peter said thoughtfully. He stretched his legs out and grinned, causing some organ near Harry’s heart to do an odd flip in his chest. “He seems like a laid back dude.”
“He… is,” Harry agreed. “What about you lot? Gwen, your parents let you have parties here?”
“When they’re out of town and don’t know about it? Yes,” she said impishly. “My brothers are with my mom’s cousin and I’m officially old and responsible enough to stay home alone.”
“And she celebrated that sense of responsibility by throwing a party.” Peter held his fist out to Gwen and she bumped hers against his.
“And you brought Avenger Junior to make sure that everyone stays safe,” Gwen winked.
Harry cleared his throat and smiled politely. “Actually, I’m more of an Anti-Avenger—”
“The fun AA,” Peter grinned, quoting what Pepper told him at the shelter.
“Precisely,” Harry agreed. “So really I’m here to do the opposite of whatever they would.”
Gwen perked right up. “So if they would stay safe and make good decisions…?”
“Then danger and bad decisions is the agenda for tonight,” Harry nodded.
“Perfect!” Gwen jumped to her feet. “Nobody move! I’ll be back!”
“You’ve done it now,” Peter told him in a faux-chiding tone. He shook his finger at Harry and slumped back in his chair. “Gwen’s always wanted someone to make bad decisions with.”
“You don’t make bad decisions then?” Harry asked him. “Perfectly well-behaved, you are?”
“Me? Oh, yeah, I’m like the image of perfect.” Peter’s eyes glimmered and he held up his hand with the palm out, “I volunteer with animals, I get great grades, I’m good with my hands. Honestly, parents love me, Harry, I’m like a dream come true.”
“And you’re incredibly humble,” Harry added solemnly. “That’s the most important part.”
The back door flew open, increasing the volume of the music, and Gwen led out a whole group of people.
“I have the secret formula for danger and bad decisions!” Gwen held up two large glass bottles, one blue and one pink, to general cheers from the rest of the teens in the yard. “UV Blue and UV Lemonade!”
Everyone scrambled to clamber out of the pool and rearrange chairs so the cement patio between the pool and the house could be filled with people all sitting on the ground. One of the blue haired girls, Brittany’s friend it seemed like, ran in and grabbed a stack of red plastic cups that she began distributing.
A girl in a pink bikini crinkled her nose when Gwen filled her cup with the blue drink. “Do you have anything to mix it?” she asked.
Gwen laughed and shook her head. “Nope! Drink and make terrible choices that don’t involve breaking anything or my mom will kill me.”
Harry glanced at Peter, who sighed loudly as they moved from their chairs to the group with the others. “Is she always a bit terrifying?”
“Who? Gwen?” Peter accepted two cups and immediately handed one off to Harry. “Yeah, usually.”
“Wicked.” Harry grinned at the hyper blonde when she filled his cup with the pink liquid. He waited until she poured Peter a drink and bounced off to the next set of empty cups being held up to ask Peter the question he had been curious about, “Are you and her…?”
“What?” Peter stared at Harry for a moment before turning to look at where Gwen was laughing with a bloke with a mohawk. “Oh, no,” he laughed and scooted a little closer to Harry. “We’re just friends.”
That probably shouldn’t have affected Harry’s decision to like Gwen Stacy, but it did.
“I like her,” he said firmly.
“I hate her,” Harry groaned less than an hour later. He had drank the pink liquor at her insistence, as did everyone else, and while he enjoyed the burn in his chest and the way that all his problems seemed to disappear as he drank, he didn’t enjoy the way she kept dragging him into conversations and games.
Gwen had decided that since most of the kids outside were from different schools that they should ‘play a game and get to know each other’. Someone suggested they play ‘Two Truths and a Lie’, which was fine when everyone else took their turns and the rest of them shouted out which statement they made about themselves that was a lie.
It was kind of fun, actually, drinking and shouting at each other, laughing and pretending he was a normal bloke like the rest of them.
Gryffindor parties had never been so fun.
Harry even got Peter and Gwen to start ‘awarding points’ when a giggly girl recounted Harry’s brief disagreement with Flash.
“Twenty points to the jocks!” Peter yelled when no one had guessed that the bloke in shorts and a tank top was in his choir at church.
“Harry’s turn!” Gwen yelled. She grabbed Harry by the arm and pulled him to his slightly unsteady feet and pushed him to the front of the crowd. “Two truths and a lie, Stark!”
It was incredibly weird being called Stark, but it was much weirder to have people look at him and giggle and grin as if Harry were one of them.
Actually, that second bit was nice. None of them knew ‘Harry Potter’ the ‘Boy-Who-Lived’. They just assumed his last name was Stark (a change that Harry‘s new ID card confirmed and he was firmly denying) and they were still happy to let Harry hang out with them.
Of course, most of them seemed pissed, but they had liked him when he first arrived too, so he figured it still counted.
Harry considered the statements the others made. Coming up with a lie was easy, it was the truths he struggled with.
“Alright.” Harry took a drink of the actually disgusting blue liquor in his cup. “I stole a car before and wrecked it into a tree, I’m top of my class at my old school, and I once got bit by a snake and almost died.”
Everyone started buzzing as they whispered back and forth between glances and giggles when they looked at Harry.
Peter sat in the back of the group and smirked up at Harry, “You’ve definitely stolen a car!”
“Oh, yeah, he’s got ‘rebel without a cause’ written all over him,” Gwen nodded.
“Excuse you, I happen to have an excellent cause,” Harry drawled, causing a lot of giggles to erupt once more.
Girls were honestly very giggly people.
“Hmm… he was in the brave club, not the smart club,” Gwen said thoughtfully.
“You can be brave and smart,” a girl with thick black eyeliner and a nose ring said. “I’m going with the snake thing, no way Tony Stark’s kid isn’t top of his class.”
“Hands in the air if you’re voting snake?”
Over half the group put their hands up.
“Wrong,” Harry said with a smirk. He peeled his jacket off and rolled his shirt sleeve up to show his basilisk scar. “Snake bite when I was twelve.”
“Oh my god.” Brittany, who was sitting right up front with her blue hair friend’s head in her lap, gaped at the scar. “What the fuck kind of snake leaves a scar like that?”
“A big one,” Harry deadpanned.
“Twenty points to the art kids!” Gwen declared. “Peter, your turn!”
Peter groaned but got to his feet good-naturedly and grinned when he passed Harry to swap spots.
“Let’s see… I sing in the shower, green is my favorite color, and I’ve broken my arm twice.”
“Hey, Harry?”
Harry turned to Gwen and jolted backwards to see she was right in his face. “What?”
Gwen furrowed her brows and seemed to be staring really hard in Harry’s eyes. “Nothing,” she finally said after a moment. She turned back to the general group, “Peter’s favorite color is definitely green,” she told the others confidently.
“I think he’s broken his arm at least once I remember signing a blue cast he wore in third grade,” a bloke with glasses and a ‘Midtown High Band’ shirt said.
“We’re going with the shower singing is a lie,” Gwen called up to Peter.
“You are… wrong!” Peter held up his left arm. “I didn’t break this bad boy twice, I broke it three times!” He accepted a few high fives on his way back to where Harry and Gwen sat and the twenty points that Gwen gave ‘the nerds’. “Go on then, Gwendolyn, you’re up then I’m heading out.”
“Fine,” Gwen checked her phone and sighed. “It is getting late and I wouldn’t put it past my dad to have one of his friends drive by tonight.”
As Gwen moved to the front, Peter scooted next to Harry and tilted his head toward Harry’s.
“Are you in a rush to get home or do you wanna hangout?” he asked. Harry saw he had a flush to his cheeks, probably the same flush Harry had from the heat and the drinks.
“Definitely not in a rush,” Harry said.
Peter smiled, “Cool.”
“Cool.”
After Gwen lost twenty points from the ‘chameleon club’, which only consisted of her, for everyone accurately guessing that she never played with Barbie’s as a kid, Harry and Peter set off after an excessive amount of goodbyes.
“You’ve got a lot of friends,” Harry said casually as they strolled down the sidewalk in Gwen’s neighborhood.
“Me?” Peter chuckled. “Man, none of those kids ever even talked to me before they saw we were friends. It’s you they all wanted to talk to.”
“Me?” Harry furrowed his brows. “What for?”
Peter threw an arm over Harry’s shoulder, a causal and friendly gesture. “You’re a new guy, mysterious and funny. Iron Man’s secret son? Those eyes? Pft, you’re like a babe magnet.”
Harry scowled and kicked a rock on their path. “That’s mad,” he said lamely.
“That’s life, man,” Peter said. He glanced over at Harry subtly, “You have a girlfriend back in England?”
“No.”
“Boyfriend?”
Harry’s face had to be as red as Ron’s hair. He would have said he wasn’t gay, he was freaky enough with his magic, thanks, but he settled for another firm, “No.”
Peter, rather cryptically, said, “Good,” then added, “Me either.”
The posh houses got more sparse the further they walked and businesses with neon lights and music pulsing from inside became more common.
“It’s the city that never sleeps,” Peter grinned. “I like to ride around the city when I can’t sleep.”
Harry liked to stare out a window when he couldn’t sleep, so he figured it was just a difference in taste.
“Do you know how to ride?” Peter asked when he saw Harry looking at the skateboard sticking out of the faded navy backpack he wore.
“Not even a little bit, no,” Harry admitted. It looked easy when he saw people doing it down the sidewalk when he took Joey for walks though.
Peter reached over his shoulder and pulled the skateboard out in a single smooth motion. “You wanna learn?”
Harry felt suddenly shy with the smile Peter gave him, which was stupid, really. “Alright,” he agreed.
As it turned out, skateboarding was incredibly hard to do.
Peter took Harry to a park that had concrete ramps and holes and Harry watched as Peter made it all look so easy. He rode the board down in the hole, came up on the ledge, flipped it, went back down.
“You try,” Peter said with a bright smile. “Don’t worry about the other stuff, just… here…” He held Harry’s hand and helped him find his balance merely standing on the board. “Now use your right foot to push, like that… yes!”
Harry wobbled and shook and stumbled a few times, but Peter still jumped up and threw his fist in the air when Harry got to the other end of the park.
“Now come back!” he yelled.
Harry couldn’t figure out how to turn it, so he just grabbed it and turned it around and shakily made his way back.
“You’ll be a pro in no time,” Peter said. “Here…” he took out a pair of white earbuds from his pocket, similar to the ones Tony always wore, and handed Harry one. “It’s easier to ride when you’re listening to music.”
It was actually much harder because then Harry was distracted from pushing the board around by the music in one ear and Peter singing the lyrics as loud as possible in the other ear.
“It’s New York, Harry! No one sleeps here! Come on! Sing with me!”
Harry laughed, Peter’s enthusiasm and energy was contagious. “I don’t know the words.”
“Make it up then!”
Peter sat on a ramp and dangled his legs off the side while Harry wobbled around on his board.
“C’mon, this is classic Papa Roach! Because daaaaays come and goooo! But my feelings for you are foreverrrrr! Hit it, Harry!”
Harry laughed and tried to sing just as loud as Peter was. “Because days come and—”
“Scream it! Make everyone hear you!”
“MY FEELINGS FOR YOU ARE FOREVER!”
“Yess! One last kisssss, before I go! Dry your tears! It is time to let you go!”
By the time Harry fell off the skateboard for the third time, he moved over to the ramp to sit with Peter and they were stupidly singing all the songs in Peter’s ‘top playlist’. They fell over on each other, laughing their heads off, when someone from a distant apartment building yelled at them to ‘Shut the fuck up and keep their day jobs!’
“I’ll send it to you so you can be a true moody teenager,” Peter told him. He turned down the volume in the ear buds and clicked a few buttons on his phone. “Ta da! You’ve got my entire soul in song form now, be gentle with it.”
“You’ve got a song called ‘American Idiot’ on here,” Harry pointed out after he pulled his phone out to look through the songs.
“Which is a classic,” Peter nodded. “It’s my personal anthem.”
Harry laughed and checked his texts while he had his phone. He had seven new texts from Sirius he refused to open and three from Tony which he did open.
Hey kid, all good?
If I fall asleep before you’re ready to come back, call me for a ride, doesn’t matter what time, I’ll answer. No rush, have fun, be back whenever.
Preferably before breakfast. You do still have a sentence to serve.
“God, you’ve got like the most lenient parent ever,” Peter laughed as he peeked over Harry’s shoulder. “My uncle’s going to skin me alive when I get home.” Harry must have made a face, because he quickly added, “I’m joking, he’ll just give me a whole lecture about responsibility.”
“You live with your uncle then?” Harry asked, probably sharper than intended.
Peter leaned back on his hands, the shadows from the park hiding his expression as the wind ruffled his hair. “Yeah, my aunt too. My parents disappeared from a plane crash when I was a kid. They declared them dead when I was like 12.” He had his eyes closed, but he peeked one open to look at Harry, “They never found their bodies though, so it’s a mystery.”
Harry felt a pang of empathy for him. “Sorry,” he said quietly, “my parents died when I was a kid too. No mystery though, just murdered.”
“That’s rough,” Peter’s face was soft. “But you’ve got Tony, right?”
“I didn’t know we were related until a few weeks ago,” Harry said wryly. “Hell of a surprise.”
“Cool surprise?”
Harry hummed. “Not particularly. I had- I had a whole plan, you know? And now it’s all fucked up.”
He had a godfather. He had plans with his godfather. He was going to learn magic. Hide out from his problems. Be a family with Sirius.
Now he had no one, really. A Tony, which wasn’t nearly as good as a Sirius had been. Tony didn’t know him, didn’t understand him. Harry couldn’t call Tony when he couldn’t sleep, he couldn’t talk to him about his crushing loneliness or his most desperate desire to just be normal. He had a Tony, but Tony was a hero and Harry was a coward.
Eventually, Tony would probably get to know Harry and decide, like every other person, that Harry wasn’t worth the hassle. Then Harry would just have himself, which was both comforting and terrifying. He’d never abandon himself, which was nice, but he also would rather not spend much time with himself since he was his least favorite person alive.
Peter sat up and leaned against Harry, both of them looking out toward the never ending twinkling lights of the city while music played in their ears.
“The thing about plans, is you can always make new ones,” Peter said. He turned his head enough for Harry to see his smile out of the corner of his eye. “For the record? I’m glad your new plan involves being here.”
Harry turned toward him and his stomach tied itself into knots as he looked in Peter’s perfectly earnest brown eyes.
“Yeah, maybe one day I will too.”
By the time Harry and Peter left the park, caught a series of confusing buses and trolleys, it was eerily silent in Harry’s ‘neighborhood’.
Peter left Harry at the tower doors after forcing Harry to promise to text him so they could ‘hang out again soon’. It wasn’t all that hard of a promise to make, as Harry probably enjoyed spending time with him more than he should.
Peter was…
He was cute, which someone would probably have to be blind not to notice. He was funny too, a shit singer, but witty and a laugh to be around. And Harry kept thinking about how endless his brown and gold-flecked eyes were, and that said quite a bit more about himself than he cared to consider.
Harry entered the tower quietly, trying to remain inconspicuous. Tony had told him he could come back ‘whenever’, but three in the morning still seemed a bit extreme. Harry crept silently through the sitting room, peeking quickly in Tony’s room to see if he was asleep and letting out a relieved breath to see that he was.
He’d rather not be having a crisis and deal with Tony’s constant pestering questions.
Harry moved toward the kitchen, planning on getting a bottle of water, and froze before he made it to the refrigerator.
There was a man Harry had never seen before sitting at the counter. He had dark skin, a bald head, and a black eye patch across one eye. Harry froze immediately as he saw him and his hand inched toward the little silver weapon in his pocket. There was something commanding, fierce, just in the way the man sat there, staring at Harry, with his face set in terrifyingly hard lines.
“Well, well, well,” he said, “you do look a damn lot like your dad.”
It didn’t sound like a compliment or a question, so Harry stayed silent, caught like a deer in headlights.
The man leaned forward and Harry could see he had a decent number of scars on his face. He clasped his hands in his lap and he gestured with a hand toward a stool across from him. Then his eye flicked up to Harry’s forehead and he smirked, “Why don’t we talk about what the fuck Harry Potter is doing in New York, huh?”