dynamics, 7
Peter put his pen down and let out a heavy groan. The content he was studying for his exams wasn’t supposed to be hard, but there was a lot of it and the exams were all closed book. He had to remember everything off the top of his head, and that was the issue. He was confident he was mostly ready now; all that was left was last little bits of memorization and then he could just-
His phone buzzed on his desk, snapping him out of his messy, stressy train of thought. Peter sighed, and picked it up. A message from Harley. Peter smiled, like he always did when Harley messaged him, or showed up in front of him, or called him.
Harls: You know how you gave me permission to come distract you from studying sometime today?
Beet: Ah fuck
Beet: I forgor
Harls: lmao
Harls: ok, get your ass outside, you’re done studying for today
Beet: but
Beet: but but but
Beet: ok fine, gimme a couple minutes
He had completely forgotten about that agreement he made with Harley a few days back. They both knew they were likely to get completely stuck in their rooms studying even the day before the first exam, and that it wasn’t necessarily a good thing. So Harley had decided he wanted to take responsibility for making sure that they both got some fresh air and a proper break away from studying, and Peter had agreed. And then promptly forgot because he was too focused on dealing with Scorpion and then studying to remember that he was supposed to also spend some time not studying.
Since it was a bit of a chilly day, Peter grabbed his jacket, slipped on some shoes and made his way down the stairs and outside, where Harley was already waiting with a wicker basket in one hand and a backpack slung over his shoulder. He was wearing his increasingly common autumn outfit of jeans, tshirt and flannel, and it looked... good. Harley just looked so incredibly comfortable and the sight made Peter start to relax immediately.
“Alright, come on,” Harley said as soon as Peter made it to his side. “There’s a nice park about fifteen minute’s walk from here.”
“Did you plan an entire picnic?” Peter asked, laughing delightedly at the notion that his friend had gone this far so they could both just have some time to relax.
“Course I did, Pete,” Harley confirmed. “This way we can get away from the books for a few hours and just hang out somewhere peaceful.”
They started walking, and Peter couldn’t help but feel so incredibly fond of Harley. He really was the best best friend Peter could have asked for. Fifteen minutes of idle chatter about photos and fantasy later, they arrived at a park that didn’t quite overlook the river, what with how a line of bushes and trees obstructed the majority of the riverside view. But it was nice, and not too busy, and there was a good spot of shade under a large tree that both Peter and Harley started eyeing unanimously. Without a single word between them, they made their way over and Harley set down the basket before swinging the bag off his back.
From the bag he produced a soft-looking picnic blanket that was promptly laid out, followed by a deck of cards, a chess board, a bluetooth speaker, a couple of pillows, and a blanket. Just the one, which Peter didn’t mind; he was more than happy to snuggle up with his best friend.
“Wow, you really came prepared, huh?” Peter said, grinning as he surveyed all of the contents from the backpack.
“For you? Absolutely,” Harley responded before his face filled with red and he looked away. “Uh-”
Peter laughed. “Hey, that’s not something you need to be embarrassed about. It’s nice! Next time I’ll be the one to go all out.”
Harley took a breath, and sat down. “Yeah, alright. I’m holdin’ you to it. Okay, rule one is no exam talk until we’re back at the dorms. Deal?”
“Deal,” Peter agreed, even if he was tempted to tell Harley about how he was almost ready for his first exam tomorrow. It was better this way, getting some actual rest. “Food first? I didn’t have a particularly large lunch and you know how my metabolism is.”
“Hence why I bought plenty of food. Seriously, maybe Stark Industries should set up a fund just to feed you and Gwen,” Harley said as he opened up the basket and started unloading things. Inside was sandwiches galore, a bottle of juice and a jug of water, a loaf of really nice looking bread and some fancy spreads, a few wraps and a couple packets of chips. “Behold, the combined power of uber eats and a trip to the supermarket.”
“And a fuckhuge inheritance,” Peter added.
“Yeah, that too.” Harley didn’t deny it.
Half an hour later, a solid third of the food was depleted. Peter and Harley set their plates aside and Harley pulled out the chess set once there was space. Just as he was beginning to set all the pieces in place, his phone buzzed hard enough to start sliding across the picnic blanket.
“Huh,” Harley said as he grabbed the phone and checked who it was. “It’s Abby. Wasn’t expecting a call from her. Mind if I take it? Maybe I can introduce the two of you finally.”
“Go for it,” Peter answered, and took over setting up the chess pieces while Harley answered.
“Hey Abs, what’s up?”
“Yeah, I’m good. Out having a picnic with Peter so we could get away from exam prep for a bit. Mind if I put you on speaker?”
After a couple of seconds, Harley pressed a button on the screen and set the phone down.
“Abby, Peter. Peter, Abby - my sister,” Harley introduced them. Peter had heard plenty about Abby here and there, how she was tough as nails and naturally confident and dead-set on getting out of Rose Hill some day too.
“Um... hi,” said Abby. “Yeah, Harls speaks highly of you so I’m cool to have this conversation with you here. I guess, uh, it might actually help that you’re here, from what Harls mentioned about you.”
“Conversation?” Harley questioned. “Is something up?”
“Yeah. I guess, well. Somethin’ I’ve been figurin’ out about myself lately. I told Ma a little bit ago today and didn’t want to wait before I told you to.”
Yeah, Peter knew what was happening. This was a coming out call, probably of a very particular kind.
“Oh yeah?” Harley responded, tilting his head a little to the side and scrunching up his face a bit.
“So... I gotta inform you that you don’t actually have a sister,” they said, and Peter couldn’t help but smile. Harley’s mouth opened a little, and he nodded - even though this wasn’t even remotely a video call. “I’m pretty solidly nonbinary, turns out. I kinda started realisin’ after you told me about your trans friends at college.”
Peter’s breath caught momentarily - the realisation that he had catalysed someone realising that they’re trans sat heavy with him, in a warm and comforting way. It was... special, to have that kind of impact. It was like that dinner over Sukkot when Rabbi Isaacs had made sure Peter knew just how much of a positive he and his friends were having by being openly queer superheroes - only even more powerful considering one of the people affected was his best friend’s sibling.
“Nice,” Harley said without any delay, taking the revelation in stride. “Who needs a sister anyway? So, anythin’ I should know, like name and pronouns?”
“Yeah. I guess I’ve been tryin’ out the name Xander, and it feels pretty comfy. Just online, you know? But then Ma started callin’ me Xander this mornin’ and... yeah, that’s the one for me,” Xander explained, bringing smiles to both Peter and Harley’s faces. “And... are you familiar with neopronouns at all?”
Harley chuckled. “I’m familiar with neopronouns, yeah!”
“Well. I guess I feel most comfortable with xe/xem/xier pronouns, and not really anythin’ else. I still gotta put up with being called Abby and she/her at school and other places, so I didn’t really wanna compromise in spaces I can be out,” Xander said, and Peter started quietly testing the sound of the pronouns at a whisper, because he’d never used those pronouns for anyone out loud before.
“I’ll make sure to practice,” Harley promised. “Hey Peter, I guess I’m gonna have to tell you even more about xem now!”
“I guess you will,” Peter agreed. “I’m happy for you, Xander. Figuring this kind of stuff out is a big deal, huh?”
Xander sighed. “Yeah, it really is. But everythin’ about how I understand myself makes way more sense now. Thanks for bein’ so cool about this. I dunno if I’ll be able to be properly out in this shitty town, but Ma’s already talkin’ about seein’ if movin’ could be an option. She’s... well, she’s been really good about this. I knew she’d be okay with me comin’ out as bi a while back after seein’ you come out, but this was a bit of a roll of the dice.”
“Our Ma’s pretty great, isn’t she?”
“Yeah. She said that she’s never heard of neopronouns before, and she just asked me to teach her how to say mine and spell them too. And now she’s been sayin’ my name at every single opportunity to help me test it out.”
“That’s amazing,” Peter said, thoroughly impressed. “That’s really amazing. I hope you can move somewhere you get to be yourself, you deserve it. Especially after putting up with Harley for so many years!”
“Hey!” Harley protested. “I am a delight.”
“Yeah, that’s true,” Peter conceded.
“Rose-tinted glasses, Peter. Well, I’ve gotta go and run a few errands. Nice meetin’ you properly, Peter!”
“And you, Xander,” Peter responded.
“Oh, and Harls?”
“Yeah?”
“I am judgin’ you so hard right now. Just so you know. Okay bye!”
The call ended before Harley got a chance to even protest Xander’s closing words.
“Huh.” The sound broke free from Harley’s lips a few seconds later. “Alright, neat. Xander’s a pretty cool name, isn’t it?”
“Sure is,” Peter agreed. “I’m really glad xe felt comfortable telling you. How are you feeling about the whole thing?”
Harley shrugged, and then grinned. “Well, same as you, I think. I’m really glad xe felt comfortable tellin’ me, and also to know somethin’ as important as that about my sibling. Now that Xander’s figured that out, ‘n all. I’ll just have to practice... xier name and pronouns in my head and out loud a bit to get used to the change, is all. And... yeah, wow. I’m really fuckin’ proud of xem!”
Peter chuckled. “Hell yeah. So, chess?”
“Chess,” Harley agreed, and the two of them busied themselves setting up all the pieces. “I gotta warn you though, I was chess captain at my old school.”
“Oooh, scary,” Peter teased. “I’ll have you know that Mama Spider didn’t just teach me how to fight, so you better watch out!”
Peter won, but it was a close thing. Harley vowed to take vengeance some other time while Peter packed the set away and then connected his phone up to the bluetooth speaker. He had a particular playlist that he knew would be nice to relax to - one of those public playlists made by Spotify, called “Fantasy Board Gaming”. Nerdy, yes. Relaxing? Very.
“Want a pillow?” Harley offered, holding both of them up.
Peter hummed, and then grinned a little. “Nah. I mean, I can see a perfectly good pillow right in front of me already. If you’re okay with being used as one, I mean.”
Harley’s face reddened a little. “Sure, I guess. You’ll just have to deal with my rock hard abs, then.”
“You wish,” Peter snorted, as Harley set down a pillow for himself and lay down. The blanket wasn’t really needed now that it had warmed up a little.
Harley rolled his eyes. “Well sorry, we can’t all be goin’ around liftin’ fuckin’ cars like it’s no big deal.”
Peter settled down once Harley looked like he’d gotten himself comfortable. He lay his head across Harley’s chest, the rest of his body perpendicular to his friend’s. “That, my friend, sounds like a skill issue. Now, if you want, I’ve been told that my hair ranks incredibly well as a stim toy.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah,” Peter confirmed, doing his best not to think about who had told him that. Once Harley started carding his hands through Peter’s curls, it didn’t take very long for him to fall sound asleep.
“C’mon, Snow White, you’ve got this,” Daisy murmured to the tablet sitting in front of her as she watched a separate display screen that showed the live camera feed of a drone currently flying over the Prettyboy Dam in Maryland. It had taken her two whole days just to figure out how to use Fitz’s specialised DWARF tablet to control the drones properly, and now she had a grand total of one drone following the location feed from the Stark Industries tracker that had been planted on Wilton a while back.
“Snow White?” Gwen questioned from beside her. They’d gotten the go ahead from Norman Osborn to hijack one of the biomedical labs at Oscorp Tower, where Daisy, Gwen and Riri were now holed up and working on their various tasks. While Daisy was controlling a drone Fitz had agreed to loan her to scout out what was most likely the Manufacturer’s base, Gwen was working on the diviner innoculation idea that they, Peter and Harley had brainstormed, and Riri was scribbling notes on a map of the entire Prettyboy Reservoir Park.
“Yup,” Daisy confirmed. “Snow White and the seven dwarves. That’s what Fitz called them, anyway. Fitz promised me that between the stealth paneling and some kind of fancy frequency jammer, Snow White wouldn’t be detected by the enemy. If I can just get her inside, I can try and find out as much as possible about what we’re up against and then Riri and I can make a formal plan. How goes the anti-diviner stuff?”
Gwen hummed, and used a needle to inject a single millilitre of a solution onto some kind of synthetic flesh that Oscorp had developed for biological testing. The flesh was sitting inside a fume hood that Gwen then sealed up before shattering a terrigen crystal inside of. Daisy glanced over, and saw that there was a small portion of the flesh around the edge that had been turned to stone, but the rest was intact.
“Pretty fucking good,” Gwen declared. “This is, like, the third version of the treatment, and it only petrifies a little. Obviously the goal is for the diviner metal to have no effect, which hasn’t happened yet. It fully worked with Peter’s isolated piece of diviner metal making contact with the flesh, but in gaseous form it’s still doing some damage. I think the issue is just the distribution, and Harley was pretty confident that using nanobots to help provide multiple distribution points would fix that. He’ll be in after his exam tomorrow to get that working, and in the meantime I’m just trying to get this as good as possible by figuring out the dosing.”
“I understood maybe half of that,” Daisy admitted, and then locked her attention back to Snow White’s display feed. It had just found an entrance to the base, which Daisy and Riri had already figured out was under the water. The goal was to find all of the entrances, which... if Fitz’s tech worked like he said it would, Snow White would accomplish in just a few more minutes. “But it sounds like this will actually work. What about testing on a full human body, though?”
“Yes, Gwen, what about that?” Riri prodded, but not harshly at all. “You guys had a great idea for that, didn’t you?”
Gwen sighed. “Well, once part of the flesh samples begin turning to stone, it doesn’t keep going back into the zone that’s been effectively treated. We also took a small tissue sample from Peter and tried a low dose of this variant on that, and after a small section did petrify, it healed. So. We’re gonna give the drug to Peter. And for the record, he was the one to suggest it, so it’s not some sketchy fucked up unethical experimentation.”
Daisy blinked. She maneuvered Snow White down to the latch that had been located, and positioned a scanning extension against the steel surface. She blinked again. “You’re going to test it on Peter, and what, hope that he just heals if it doesn’t work fully?”
“Yep,” Riri confirmed. “I gotta admit, it’s probably the best option we have now that we know animal models don’t work, but it’s... well, fucking daring.”
“I know,” Gwen blurted. “I know it is, I really do. Look, the nanobots safely get taken out by the kidneys after a few hours, and I haven’t seen any indication that Peter’s metabolism shortens the duration for this particular drug. So, Peter’s healing ability is how we make sure this properly works. We’ll have, what, a few days to finish this?”
“Yup, we’ll fly out on Friday night,” Daisy answered, and hit a button to display the results from Snow White’s scan. Bingo. The drone had successfully searched for the same frequencies that were used to secure this entrance, and found seven more entrances scattered around the reserve. A few more buttons later, the readings were sent over to Riri’s laptop. Riri started marking the locations down on the map. “And if this drug doesn’t work completely, no non Inhumans can come.”
“No pressure,” Gwen joked.
“Yeah, no pressure,” Daisy echoed. She flew Snow White away from the door, and positioned the drone to wait. It had picked up evidence of someone approaching the entrance from within, so all that Daisy needed to do was wait for the door to open and then fly Snow White inside.
“I’m about ninety-nine percent confident we’ll pull it off,” Gwen declared, and finished typing up some notes on their laptop. They then grabbed a fresh needle and added a now slightly adjusted solution to it, before injecting it into a new, larger flesh sample. “Yup. I’ll swing by when Harley comes in and we’ll probably be able to do the final touches all in one session.”
“Colour me impressed,” Daisy praised. When Peter had suggested the possibility of being able to make a drug that countered the effects of the diviner metal, she had already been curious to see if it was possible. After all, it was different to what Jemma had been aiming for. To see the three teenagers pull this off, though, was pretty incredible. “Okay, Snow White’s inside. Let’s scout this place out and see who this Manufacturer person really is.”
“And once you scope out the inside more, I’ll figure out the best entrance for us to use when we attack,” Riri added. Riri had really been taking Daisy’s tactics and leadership lessons to heart, to the point at which Daisy had readily asked her if she wanted to have a big role in planning this attack. Riri was in charge of plans for if everyone could safely come, and Daisy was going to draw up strategies and fall-backs for if it was an Inhuman-only operation.
The three of them worked in silence for the next ten minutes - with Daisy sending files, screenshots and notes to Riri whenever she saw something of note. With Snow White’s stealth capacity, it was laughably easy to just fly the drone around and scan anything and everything without getting caught. The real kicker, though was when Daisy directed the drone to follow someone who had said out loud that they were on their way to meet with the ‘big boss’.
The ‘big boss’ in question was in a quiet room that Daisy immediately realised was styled after the architecture from Afterlife. An elderly looking man in simple grey attire - a baggy button-down shirt and office-appropriate work pants. He was Chinese too, had an eerily calm look on his face. A face that was familiar.
“Oh shit,” Daisy swore. “Yat-Sen’s the manufacturer.”
Riri raised an eyebrow. “Yat-Sen?”
Daisy sighed. “He was one of the advisers to mine and Gwen’s mom. He seemed so nice at first, but it’s hard to think of someone as ‘nice’ when they were on board with Jiaying’s genocidal plans. And... something’s up, because he doesn’t look like he’s aged a day since, and that was almost ten years ago. Fuck.”
She definitely wasn’t letting any of the non-Inhumans come unless the drug worked perfectly.