Chapter 3
The morning comes with an overwhelmingly anxiety that Peter wishes he could swallow down. As nice as it is to have somebody remember him and feel like things are finally going to get better, as he looks at himself in the mirror, he can’t help but feel a pit growing in his stomach. There is so many unknowns to this situation, all ranging in seriousness. On one end of the spectrum, he must consider how this could damage the universe; will the multiverse break as people begin to remember? He’s desperately trying not to think about that possibility, but in doing that he finds his thoughts at the other end of the spectrum which is screaming;
Even if everybody does remember you, who says they’ll want you back?
Peter knows it’s irrational, Aunt May would have been so mad at him for putting himself down this way, but insecurities are hard to squash down and his stressed mind isn’t letting up.
“One step at a time.” He mutters to himself, running a hand through his hair. He finishes getting ready, momentarily shaken by the very idea of how long it’s been since he’s done a mundane thing such as brushing his teeth in the morning. A soft sigh escapes chapped pink lips. Pale skin wrinkles around sunken eyes as he squints at the way his collarbones poke out from the shirt collar. Peter can’t help but be disgusted with himself. MJ would probably throw up if I tried to kiss her looking like this.
Silently, the thin figure made his way to the living space, to be greeted by the delicious scent of coffee. He turns the corner of the wall separating him from the kitchen and spots Harley sipping a steaming mug with his focus on a copy of ‘The Hunger Games’. The blonde is clearly freshly showered, his hair dripping onto the towel he has wrapped around his shoulders to protect the band shirt he wears beneath it. Peter has to tear his eyes away from a drop of water rolling down the other boy’s neck.
“Gale’s hot but a prick.” He greets, causing Harley to jump and almost spill his coffee in his efforts to spin around.
“Jesus Christ, Peter.” He huffs, hand grabbing at his chest. “I almost had a heart attack. How did you sleep?” He asks placing his coffee down and marking the page in his book.
“Meh, better than usual, I guess.” The brunette makes his way over to the coffee machine and reaches for a mug to pour himself a cup.
“Peter Parker.” Karen’s voice sounds from the ceiling, a warning edge to her voice. Peter smiles innocently.
“Yes, mother-bot?” Harley looks at him in confusion as he slowly tries to pour himself a cup.
“Unless I am mistaken and your metabolism has changed that much in two years, you aren’t meant to drink coffee, or anything highly caffeinated for that matter.” Peter huffs and pouts. Harley snorts.
“Oh, come on, I drink it all the time-”
“Why can’t you drink coffee? I swear you had two cups yesterday.” The amused blonde interrupts.
“Ugh, it’s something stupid about how I break it down quicker than a normal person and it can cause bursts of adrenaline that are detrimental to my heart in the long run. But like, coffee is unhealthy to normal people for similar reasons anyway! I just want a nice hot drink and coffee was the only affordable thing that didn’t taste awful like the machine-made teas around here. I got hooked.” He directed the last bit at Karen (the ceiling), with an unimpressed scowl, reminiscent of an angry cat. Harley breathes out a soft laugh.
“It’s okay, Karen. I’ll make him a nice hot chocolate so his heart doesn’t explode.” He says placatingly and Peter’s expression melts as he looks at the other boy collecting the necessary things from his cupboard to make a hot chocolate.
He cuts off the AI’s thanks with his protests of how Harley doesn’t need to do that but he is just hushed and told to sit at the island which he eventually gives in to.
“Fine. Where are you at in the book?”
The two find themselves discussing the plot of the series until the immaculately prepared hot chocolate is placed on the island, eliciting a groan from the vigilante. He elects to ignore the way he hears a swallow from Harley in reaction to the noise he made. He takes a giddy sip of the heavenly drink and hums at the taste, licking the cream from his lips.
“You are amazing; I’ve died and gone to heaven.” He whines, indulging himself in the sugary goodness.
“Sure.” Harley says rolling his eyes at the dramatics. “That mean I look like an angel?”
“Don’t push your luck.” The brunette answers with a wink and the other smirks back.
“Whatever Spider- can I even call you a man with you inhaling that thing like a child? I mean, I remember Tony telling me his intern had a sweet tooth and a stomach as wide as the Grand Canyon but wow.” The responding pout and death glare only made him laugh more.
“Okay, I’ll shut up and let you finish your ‘heaven’ in a cup. Hurry up though, I want to grab breakfast before we go shopping and it’s almost ten.” Peter nods around a mouthful of marshmallows and attacks the rest of his drink while Harley goes to discard his towel. When he returns the cup is empty and washed, and Peter is sitting on the counter by the sink, drying said cup with a cloth.
“Are you actually a spider? Do I need to worry about cobwebs and finding you in corners?” The blonde jokes and Peter groans, jumping off the counter.
“You are hilarious.” He fake laughs before letting his face fall completely deadpan. Harley howls. “Where are we heading to anyway?”
Harley’s laughter tapers off and he pulls up the directions to a local mall on his phone, handing it to Peter. He leaves his phone with him as he goes to grab a jacket. It’s only as Peter looks up from the list of outlets that he takes in the other man’s outfit and his brain short circuits for a split second, feeling remarkably less put together next to him.
Peter is swimming in a plain white t-shirt, sagging off his shoulders, and a pair of simple black sweatpants, tied astonishingly tight to keep them from falling. He had thrown on his own pair of battered sneakers, torn from the years of wear. It doesn’t sound that bad, but comparing himself to Harley he felt severely underdressed somehow, for a simple shopping trip.
The blonde wears a pair of baggy dark grey cargos, a perfectly fitting- not too tight, not too lose- band-shirt that looked like it could have been stolen from Tony Stark’s wardrobe. He’s pulling on a loose-fitting zip-up which drops slightly on his shoulders in a very pleasing way and Peter’s eyes hone in on his hands, adorned by two simple silver rings, which are pulling on the laces of his high-top converse as he laces them up, propped against the coffee table.
As he straightens up, Peter tries remember how to breathe, attempting to bury the feelings of self-deprecation (and he would never admit it but the feelings of oh my god, I think I am definitely bisexual).
“You ready to go?” Harley asks, and he nods, not quite trusting himself to speak yet. Harley looks him up and down and gives him a pointed look causing little needles of anxiety to prick at his skin. Do I look that bad?
“You’re gonna need a jacket, we have to walk.” Peter’s mouth opens in an oh and he rubs his neck nervously.
“Oh yeah, forgot about that.” He mutters. He goes to head back to his room to try and find a jacket that will maybe make him look less like a working corpse next to the tanned southerner but before he gets chance to move, a thick flannel hits his chest, barely alerting his senses to an incoming projectile. He smiles in thanks and pulls it on, hoping it looks alright. Harley grins back.
“There we go, now you won’t freeze. Let’s get going.” With that he’s opening the door to the apartment and waving at Peter to follow. He does.
As they get to the ground floor and hit the streets, they’re wrapped in the conversation of priority purchases. New York, as busy as always, provides the backtrack to their bickering. Peter having finally found his voice.
“Harley, I really don’t need a phone.”
“Yes, you do! What if I’m working and want to ask you to pick up some milk or something?” He argues.
“You can ask Karen to tell me! A phone is too much, you’re lucky I’m even going on this shopping trip at all.” Peter’s overdramatic hand gestures have Harley having to grab him to keep from hitting passers-by accidentally.
“Oh yeah, let me just tell the AI out loud to report back to roommate nobody knows I have. Sure, that won’t raise questions. Besides, I'd have no way of reaching you if you were... you know.” He makes the Spider-man gesture with his hands, making a little ‘pew pew’ noise. Peter huffs. He has a point and the brunette can’t think of an argument back.
“Fine.” He groans. “You better let me find a way to make it up to somehow. I’ll feel weird if I don’t.”
Harley rolls his eyes but drops it. He asks Peter to keep an eye out for a café or any place they could grab breakfast, and the next street over the brunette points out a tiny corner café. They quickly race across the busy road and enter the cosy building to the chime of a bell.
“Over here.” Harley says, pulling him towards a little booth in the window. The menus on the table are clearly the breakfast menus, only listing things like pancakes or bacon and eggs. After quickly skimming over the choices, they put in their orders, Peter deciding on some blueberry pancakes and Harley choosing a breakfast sandwich, as well as a helping of bacon and scrambled eggs. Peter chooses not to judge the hearty breakfast.
“So, Peter. What’s something you want to get today? Not a necessity, not something simple, something random as hell that you just want.” The younger man hums in thought.
“That’s a tough one. I’d probably say a Lego set.” The southerner tilts his head in response.
“You like Lego?”
“Oh yes. My friend and I spent most of high school meeting up after school just to build Lego.” Harley coos at that causing Peter to give him a light-hearted death glare.
It doesn’t take long for their food to come over, and to Peter’s surprise, Harley pushes the eggs and bacon towards him once the waitress leaves.
“Your metabolism dummy.” The blonde snorts and Peter blushes, stuttering a thank you. They eat in a comfortable silence, only occasionally piping up about random people in the street.
“That’s a fashion statement-”
“Yikes, argument at three o’clock-”
“I feel like that kid is meant to be in school-”
Time passes in a blur and suddenly they’re heading back out again, stomachs full. The mall, it turns out, is only another street or so over.
The place is relatively busy, but it’s quite early in the day still, therefore the swarms of highschoolers haven’t appeared yet. Peter is thankful for that, not quite in the mood for very busy cramped spaces. He doesn’t think his senses would have handled that kind of thing with how emotional he is at the moment.
The first store he is dragged to, is in fact the phone store, where Harley and Peter simultaneuosly completely ignore every other brand but the StarkPhones, walking straight towards the displays they know. Immediately, the blonde is looking for the newest model, ignoring Peter’s complaints about the price labels and instead interjecting about how he helped sign off on some aspects of the newest model.
“Are you trying to show off?” He asks, side-eyeing him, and Harley turns a little pink.
“Uh, I didn’t mean to, but yeah I guess. It’s more so that I’m proud of myself.” Peter’s side eye softens.
“You should be. You’re really smart.” He says, and then realizing that things are feeling a bit mushy he opens his mouth again, “Not as smart as me though.”
Harley laughs lightly and smirks at him, picking up the phone and heading to the counter to buy it. “Sure, and what phone did you help design?”
“Well actually-”
Their competitive back and forth is interrupted by the paying process and as they leave the store, they both chuckle together. Harley wraps his arm around Peter’s shoulders in a friendly gesture.
“Alright genius, let’s go to a home store. I want a scented candle.” The brunette lets out a startled breathy laugh and allows himself to be guided to a store with a makeshift room in the window, adorned in pillows and lamps with price tags dotted about.
Looking around the shelves takes an embarrassingly long time between the two of them, Harley stopping to smell every scented thing imaginable and Peter unable to stop himself from feeling every soft thing he can find. By the time they even get to the third aisle, there is two blankets tucked under Peter’s arm, one covered in tiny spiders and the other a deep blue, and Harley is carrying a basket packed full of candles and wax melts, all of which he had the other agree on if they were too strong or not.
The aisle is full of posters and other wall decorations like mirrors or tapestries. They whisk themselves to the mass amounts of posters, the older frantically eyeing all the band posters and, Peter realizes, old car posters. Meanwhile, he is drawn to the old movie posters, deciding to pick up some Star Wars and one for an old cop movie him and Uncle Ben used to watch. He also makes the split-second decision to grab a Grease one he spots to give to Harley as a gift, even though it’s technically Harley paying, well, not really. It's as they go to leave that aisle and move to the next that Peter stops dead, noticing a tapestry. He doesn’t even notice Harley come up behind him and lean into his ear causing him to jump when he speaks.
“Your usual view?” The blonde asks, and he nods. The tapestry shows the New York skyline, Stark Towers present in the backdrop. He stares at it for a moment, thinking of the other Peters. He barely registers Harley grabbing one of the tapestries and balancing it on the basket.
“You don’t have to-”
“Shush, you clearly like it.” He cuts his argument short.
The pair wander through the rest of the store, picking up the occasional ornamental object, and eventually check out. Once paid, Peter goes to reach for all of the bags but Harley swats his hand away from two of the bags.
“Just because you can carry it all doesn’t mean I’m letting you.” He says pointing his finger and picking up his own share of the purchases. Peter again realizes, there isn’t much point in arguing. If there’s one thing he’s realized in the day he has known the other boy, it’s that he is very VERY stubborn.
The rest of the day is calm and repetitive, just picture-perfect flashes in Peter’s mind of his new friend consistently picking up things he looks at for too long and refusing to put them back. Before he knows it they’re wrapping up some snack shopping- Harley refused to return home without absurd amounts of his preferred sweet things- and Peter is handed a box of a variety of flavoured hot chocolates and given that look of ‘I dare you to say no’. Of course, no arguing ensues, just the same eye roll and acceptance. He’s been worn down by the taller boy’s persuasive nature.
“Right all done here, just one more place to go.” Peter raises an eyebrow in question.
“Where? I thought we had been everywhere.” He asks. Harley just taps his own nose in response in that way that says ‘you’ll see’. He directs Peter through the mall to their final location.
“Go nuts, nerd.” The dramatic blonde says with a big wave of his arm. He’s brought him to the Lego store. Honestly, Peter is touched that he remembered. He waltzes in with a huge grin on his face, too happy to care about the fact he isn’t paying for this. He spends forever looking at every set in the place until Harley starts to lose patience and he blushes, realising how long he is taking by the tired look on the older boy’s face. He decides on the nintendo gaming system and a chevrolet which he figures the other might perhaps want to help with. Neither of them bat an eye at the price, knowing Tony sure won’t, although the cashier sure does go bug-eyed at their lack of care and the way Peter holds both boxes under one arm with ease.
It’s approaching four in the afternoon as they walk back to the apartment. The highschoolers are wandering the streets now. Peter struggles to tune out all of the loud conversations buzzing around him.
“What’s the weirdest thing you can hear right now?” Harley asks, knocking their shoulders together. Peter looks at him confused. “Sorry, I just figured it might help for you to lean into it rather than pretend you can’t hear anything? Was I wrong? I’m sorry-”
“No it’s okay!” Peter stops him. “I just didn’t realize I was being obvious about it. That’s actually really kind of you thank you.”
He takes a moment to look around at the crowds of people as they slowly walk.
“That group of middle schoolers are talking about setting up their history teacher to improve their grades.” He answers, subtly pointing at a group of young teens running towards a Starbucks.
“Oh damn, Clueless style.” Harley replies with a gasp. Peter’s face scrunches up in confusion.
“What?” The blonde’s mouth drops open.
“Oh, dear lord, you are so uncultured, we’re having a movie night.” The enhanced boy takes offence at that but he doesn’t have any hands free to clutch his chest so he just huffs and calls the other boy rude, as they finish making their way back.